


Spookfish

by AnonymousHeavyIndustries



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Anal Play, BDSM, Blow Jobs, Bromance, Cuddling & Snuggling, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Nipple Play, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Painplay, Porn With Plot, Power Play, Scent Kink, Slow Burn, Spanking, Tags May Change, Yamazaki Sousuke Has A Large Mouth, even though there's porn in almost every chapter, ghost rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-05-15 13:33:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5787067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousHeavyIndustries/pseuds/AnonymousHeavyIndustries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rin never believed in the supernatural until fighting vengeful dumpsters, haunted dildos, and incubi hellbent on corrupting his immortal soul became part of his daily routine. As he struggles to balance his athletic responsibilities and fending off the spiritual hordes, he soon finds himself fostering a growing appreciation for certain parts of Sousuke he'd never noticed before.</p><p>(Specifically the ghost retardant ones. And that diabolically sexy mouth of his.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Revenge of the Bin

"What, was it looking at you the wrong way?"

"Shut up and get me a broom," Rin grumbled as he tried to corral the broken mug bits out of the pool of tea sprawling across their dorm floor.

"Get it yourself." Sousuke continued tapping out a message on his phone. "You're going to get yourself cursed someday if you don't take better care of your things."

"I thought you would've grown out of believing in ghosts by now." Rin tossed the shards in the bin and started picking tiny bits of ceramic out of his palms. "Still afraid of burglars too?"

"I wasn't afraid of burglars. I was concerned about my home's safety like any reasonable person."

"Reasonable? Remember how you always triple checked every lock in your house? Or how you'd wake up during sleepovers and start blubbering about strangers breaking in? Because I do."

Sousuke clicked his tongue before offering a mumbled, "That was a long time ago."

"How many times did you check the locks today?" Rin waited. "Yeah, that's what I thought. At least that I can understand. Why ghosts?"

"I don't believe in ghosts. I believe that if you take care of your belongings, they'll take care of you. You wouldn't mistreat your purse like that, would you?"

"For the last time, it's a travel bag!"

"You're the one who spent 200 000 on it, you can call it whatever you want. Looks like a purse to me."

"That's because you're a tasteless moron who doesn't know the first thing about style. Talk to me again when your mum stops buying your clothes for you." Rin dug a towel out of their laundry basket to mop up the spill, cursing all the while.

"You can lecture me on style as soon as you stop decking out your ankles." Sousuke looked closer at the towel. "Is that mine?"

"Maybe."

There was no maybe about it. He'd been using the same towel, green with grey stripes, since he'd started swimming competitively. He'd placed top three in every meet he'd brought it to and he'd sooner carve out his kidney than pitch it.

Rin grinned, pressing it to his nose and whiffing deep. "Whaddaya know? I think it is. Stinks like a pig, just like you."

Sousuke swung out of his bunk and rummaged through their closet until he found a plaid scarf folded neatly amongst Rin's things.

"What're you doing?"

Sousuke snapped the scarf between his hands. "Helping."

"Don't stretch it, you shit! That's Burberry!"

Rin charged headlong into Sousuke, slamming him against the door so hard the hinges juddered. Sousuke shoved Rin into the open closet in revenge, sending waves of casualwear cascading over him. Satisfied that he had neutralized the threat, Sousuke turned towards the puddle. He made it three steps before being blindsided and pinned to the floor like an insect on a spreading board. Sousuke strained his fingers to the limits, dragging himself closer to the puddle centimetre by precious centimetre until Rin clamped down on his elbows and sat on his abdomen, pressing down his full weight. Rin reveled at the sight of Sousuke struggling beneath him, running his tongue over his teeth in a triumphant smirk. Muscle didn't mean much if you couldn't back it up with something extra and what Rin lacked in bulk he more than made up for with technique.

They remained stalemated, breaths staggered. Rin puffed his hair out of his face, shifting his weight to something slightly more comfortable. He knew the game wasn't over yet. There was still fight left in Sousuke's eyes that he intended to beat into submission. But he was a nice guy, so he'd offer him the chance to end things amicably before he finished him off. He leaned down, letting his fringe tickle Sousuke's cheeks.

"Give it up, Sousuke. It's okay to lose once in a while."

Sousuke jackknifed, sending Rin grinfirst into the hardwood floor. He tasted blood as his teeth snapped into his tongue and he felt Sousuke wrench free a second before the room abruptly revolved and he found himself bellyup in the lukewarm tea.

"You're a cheat! I had you!" he sputtered as an uncomfortable wetness spread through his shirt.

"Don't feel too bad about it. It's okay to lose once in a while." Sousuke teasingly lowered the scarf towards an exposed section of puddle while Rin thrashed under him like a rabid animal.

Rin jabbed the heel of his hand into Sousuke's chin, legs windmilling against the floor as he tried to reverse their positions. "You can't get cashmere wet! Do you know how much that cost, you raging asshole?"

Laughing low in his throat, Sousuke slung the scarf around his neck and mussed Rin's hair. "How do I look? Stylish enough for you now?"

"You look like a try-hard who's going to die alone in a ditch." Rin stopped struggling and stared at the wall beneath his bunk. "Get off, you're gonna crush me to death."

"Nah, I like the view from here."

"The hell's that supposed to mean?"

Sousuke smiled to himself, one of those rare private smiles that Rin had never managed to decrypt.

"Weirdo." Rin slapped him on the hip. "Sorry for trying to use your lucky towel. Now seriously, get up. I need to change."

"Want to go to Lawson?"

"If it'll get your fat ass off me."

"Eleven point four percent. Never forget." Sousuke flashed his abs before relinquishing his throne.

"Eleven point bullshit's more like it," Rin muttered as he slipped out of his wet shirt. "And if you say anything else, I'm gonna throw you off the fuckin balcony."

Once they had gotten themselves situated, they walked out of their room and straight into a bin.

"Oi! Whoever's this is needs to move it out of the hall!" Rin shouted as he booted it.

The bin spun in a lazy half-circle and toppled with a thud, spilling its contents across the hall. Sousuke started picking up the trash, but Rin caught him by the arm and pulled him off towards the stairs.

"Don't worry about it. Whoever put it there can clean it up."

The trashbin laid behind them in silence, still trembling.

—

The next morning brought an unpleasant realization to Rin.

He stank. Plain and simple.

It was no ordinary stench either. The smell had taken on a life of its own that was malicious in its unabashed foulness. Kinder likenings could include 'open meat shop dumpster in the middle of July' or 'burning metropolitan sewer system' and for a moment he wondered if he had shit himself in the night, but a quick check shot down that theory and the relief, though short-lived, was enough to encourage him that things weren't as bad as they seemed. Retching at his own stink, he climbed out of bed, trying to figure out the source. Too much protein? Not enough deodorant? An underclassman prank? None of them sounded quite right. His sweat had never been particularly smelly regardless of what he ate and Sousuke was too neurotic about their locks for anyone to be able to prank them in their room without one of them knowing about it.

Fortunately he'd woken up early enough that he could endure his crisis alone in the showers, scrubbing away the shame and frustration until he was rawred. After a whole lot of elbow grease and soap, he thought he was in the clear and towelled off. He enjoyed a single clean breath before the stench descended on him as foul as before. He could feel its weight perched on his shoulders as though an invisible carrion bird had claimed him as its roost and suffered through three more showers in an attempt to drive it away, but the stench remained, croaking with laughter as it dug its claws deeper. He resigned himself to a cologne bath and left the showers clinging to the hope that the stench would fade as the day went on.

Sousuke was still asleep when he returned to the room. He considered asking for help, but didn't know how to go about it without looking like a stupid asshole who didn't know how to bathe and wasn't keen on giving Sousuke future ammunition. He crafted a masterplan for the day as he dressed. Beat everyone to the cafeteria to grab breakfast, retreat to the bushes by the main building to eat, head to class when as many people were going in as possible, and do it all without letting anyone get close enough to him to catch a whiff of what was brewing beneath his uniform. Easy.

The instant his ass hit the chair, minutes before first period, he realized his plan's fatal flaw.

He had to sit through an entire day of classes.

The stench had already begun seeping through the classroom, insinuating itself into the nostrils of his peers, and Rin wanted to kick himself for overlooking such an obvious problem. Chucking a sickie from the beginning would've been the safest bet, but the thought had never occurred to him because a model student didn't do that. The moment he left class and the stench followed, everyone would know it had been him. Conversely, the longer he stayed, the more likely it was the the smell would be traced back to the source. He'd ensnared himself in a trap of his own making without a hope of escape.

"What the hell is that smell?"

"Maybe the plumbing backed up?"

"Even when my cat died when we were on holiday it didn't stink this bad."

"Someone crack a window, this shit's awful!"

Each comment tore a wound deep in Rin's pride, but there was nothing he could do about it. He passed the agonizing wait for the teacher by pretending to review a reading assignment, clenching his teeth until they ached. Whenever someone looked his way, he couldn't help but squirm, wondering if he had been found out. It was only a matter of time before he was revealed as the filth he'd become. It didn't matter how fastidious he'd been about his cleanliness before, one incident was enough for a permanent branding. He had been through it in both elementary and middle school, had been the show-off, the crybaby, the chink, the loser. But for the first time since elementary, he'd been more than that. He was the captain of one of the greatest swim teams in the south and on the fast track to a professional career. He had more power and status than he knew what to do with. He could hold his head high with pride when he walked the halls rather than dart about hoping he would go unnoticed. People respected him. It was everything he had dreamed of when he was a kid and he was on the verge of losing it all again.

Heat prickled in his eyes and the choking pressure in his chest coiled tighter tighter tighter, compressing in on itself until it quivered with explosive energy. His breath came in gulps that would barely fill a coffee straw as he stared at his book, fearful that any sudden movement would expose him, that the stench would burst forth from his uniform like pus from a ruptured boil. He was filth. He was trash. He was a failure. His lip trembled and he raised the book a bit higher, hoping that no one had seen it. No matter what happened, he couldn't cry. That would only make things worse. the guy who sat in front of him leaned over to his neighbour and complained about the stink. Pain twinged through Rin's chest and a burning wetness sliced across his lashline. He slammed the side of his fist into his collarbones, trying to stifle it. He couldn't cry. It wasn't his fault. He had tried to clean himself, had tried so many times. But he failed because he was a failure. He had to be if he couldn't do something as simple as shower properly. Failures didn't deserve everything he had. Failures didn't deserve to go to the Olympics. Failures should just disappear and save everyone the trouble of wasting their

A note helicoptered onto his desk. His grip on the book tightened as he stared down at it. There was no signature, no hint of its contents. He swallowed past the ache in his throat and laid his book aside to take the square of paper in his sweating hands. He unfolded it. There were no words, only a pair of drawings.

On one side was a black piglet playing in a cabbage patch, bounding through the furrows under the supervision of a fat bobtailed cat. On the other was a katana-wielding shark and a man with a rocket launcher driving a motorcycle over a crude facsimile of a road constructed from the corpses of their enemies. Both wore sunglasses too dark to reflect the massive constellation of explosions covering where the sky had been.

The tension in his body collapsed at the absurdity and he laughed under his breath, quickly wiping his eyes. Even unsigned he knew who the culprit was. He looked over at Sousuke, who paid him no mind as he listened to the teacher ramble about _The Five-Storied Pagoda_. Rin ran his thumb over the creases in the paper, studying the black penlines before tearing a sheet out of his own notebook and penning a response. _You're still shit at drawing._ He folded it into a football and carefully angled his shot, flicking it straight at Sousuke's head. It bounced off and fell to the ground beside him. Sousuke picked it up, read it, and wrote his reply. When the teacher turned to the blackboard, he beaned Rin in the nose. Rin cursed as it bounced onto his desk and saw that the note was wrapped around one of Sousuke's drafting erasers.

**Still better than you.**

Rin refused to dignify it with a response, waited for the teacher to turn around again, and whipped the eraser back at Sousuke so hard it whistled. Despite the impressive velocity, it missed its mark and nailed Akahori from the volleyball team instead. The class burst into sniggers and the teacher arced up, informing them in no uncertain terms that if they couldn't get their acts together they'd be spending the rest of their days sleeping under a bridge. It was a welcome distraction from the powerful odor lingering in the air and though Rin remained on edge, he was calm enough to plan his next course of action. Making it through a full day of classes was impossible, but he figured that as long as he made it to lunch, he could run and take another shower during the break. There was no guarantee it'd work any better than it had earlier, but he was willing to cling to whatever shred of hope he could find.

Relief flooded his system when lunch break finally arrived after hours of nausea and fidgeting and he made a mad dash for the exit, deflecting the chitchat tossed his way. He ran to the rarely used showers by the track and shot Sousuke a text when he realized he'd forgotten to bring anything to clean himself with.

_Do me a favour and get my shower kit. I'm at the locker room by the track._

**I'm in the lunch line.**

_I don't have time for you to stuff your face. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY!  
_

Rin decided to add a few more exclamation marks to drive the point home.

**So that smell in class was you. Who's the one that stinks like a pig now?**

_I will owe you for life please help  
_

**Be there in 5. 10 tops**

There was a pause, then a second text:

**Where is that at?**

Through a combination of painstakingly detailed verbal directions and strained patience, Rin soon caught sight of Sousuke walking up the track and bounded up to him to grab his bag. Sousuke staggered as if struck and vomited a streak of acid down the front of Rin's uniform, staining the white fabric orange. He started to apologize, but more vomit came out instead, spraying liquefied natto and rice over Rin's jacket.

"Fuck, my shoes!" Rin sprang away, trying to minimize the splatter. "It's all over my pants too... Ugh, I can feel it seeping through."

"Sorry, Sousuke gasped between dry heaves. "I wasn't expecting that. The smell's gotten a lot stronger than it was in class."

"It's that bad? I can't tell anymore, my nose was numb by second period."

Sousuke yarped up a few more jets of acid in response, though he had the decency to do it in a nearby bush instead of on Rin. "I'm good now. Nothing left to puke. What'd you do?"

"If I knew what the problem was, I would've fixed it by now." Rin peeled off his vomit-soaked uniform. "Wait for me by the lockers, I'll be right out."

Before Sousuke could protest, Rin dashed into the showers and turned the water on full blast. This time it would work. It had to.

He stormed out of the showers a few minutes later, hair plastered to his water-scorched cheeks.

"I can't get it off. I've scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and I can't get this smell off! What am I supposed to do?"

"Say you're trying out a new cologne."

"Now is not the time for jokes! My reputation is going to—this year was supposed to be different!" Rin started punching the nearest locker as his internal floodgates broke. "Dammit, dammit, dammit!"

Sousuke headed for the showers, shedding a piece of clothing every few steps until he stood naked under the spigot where Rin had been. He beckoned him over. "Get in."

"Showering with you isn't going to change anything."

"You don't have a lot of options. Might as well try the ones we've got."

"And if it doesn't work?"

"Then we make a new plan."

"We don't have time for a new plan."

"Then I'll burn down the school. Get in."

Rin stepped back under the spray, which had been dialed down to a lukewarm temperature that felt heavenly on his scalded flesh. Sousuke had already lathered his hands with shampoo.

"If you fuck up my hair, I'll kill you."

Sousuke sunk his hands into the wet mass of Rin's hair and picked up where he'd left off, scouring his scalp in methodical arches beginning just above his ears at the hairline, working his way back to the base of the skull and starting over higher than before. Rin could not help but melt into the sensation of the broad, blunted tips of Sousuke's fingers threading through his hair. This wasn't the same as the casual elbow jabs, fist bumps, knees, and tickles they exchanged on the regular nor did it fall into the realms of eroticism. It lingered somewhere between, sensual but friendly, and there was something frightful in its intimacy. He wondered if Sousuke knew how good it felt to have hands on him like this. The unstoppable urge to touch him back swelled forth and he reached up to snare his fingers in Sousuke's hair to return the favour. Neither of them deigned to comment on it.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd touched Sousuke's hair or if he ever had outside of a few noogies years ago. It was thick and almost disappointingly short. Not that he thought Sousuke would look good with long hair. Growing it out would make him come off like a starving musician who had to play in the streets for enough cash to buy a smoke, a beer, and a bowl of instant ramen to get him through the day. For the person he was now, short hair suited him, even though he would never know the simple joy Rin felt when he combed in the mornings or the feeling of pure freedom that overtook him when the wind sent his hair flying behind him. He ran his fingers along the clean gap between Sousuke's ears and sideburns and Sousuke squeezed his scalp tighter in response, eliciting a lightningstorm of sensation through Rin's nerves that sent goosebumps up his arms. If nothing else came out of this, at least he got a damned good headrub.

Eventually Sousuke moved on to Rin's face, neck, and shoulders, none of which felt quite as good as his head, but he wasn't about to complain that he didn't get to spend the rest of the day getting his head patted like a dog. He'd never hear the end of it. He kept up his own massaging until he was forced to quit so Sousuke could get his arms. The washcloth swept over his arms, rounding the mountain range of his knuckles and webs, pulling down the length of his fingers and flexing every joint through their range of motion to work out the stiffness. Combined with the hair wash, the meticulousness of Sousuke's machinations threw Rin off guard. He hadn't expected more than a quick once over and here Sousuke was giving him the full spa treatment. He reckoned he could make an ace masseuse when he was finished swimming.

With his hands complete, Rin folded his arms back so Sousuke could scrub his pits and smiled to himself at the thought of Sousuke breaking the hearts of countless bored housewives in that quiet way of his. They'd come for the massage and stay for the tall, dark, and handsome archetype that women adored without realizing he was an oblivious putz. Short of them sprawling across his table and asking to make some fuck, he doubted Sousuke would notice their interest.

"What're you laughing at?"

"Was thinking about someone trying to ask you out."

"Is that someone you? I didn't think you felt that way. I'll have to decline, you're not my type."

"You fuckin wish you could date a girl half as good as me."

"Half of nothing is still nothing. Besides, I'm in a committed relationship with myself. I'm taking me out to dinner later, it's going to be great." Sousuke laughed as Rin pummeled his stomach and socked him back. "There was this one girl while I was at Tokitsu, but that's a story for another time."

"Heaven help the idiots who fall in love with you."

"Save your prayers for the ones who like you. They need them more." Sousuke rested his hands a few centimetres below Rin's pectorals. "Your pecs have filled out nicely. They look good."

"You bet your ass they do." Rin bounced his pecs to a rapid merengue beat. "Can't do that, can you?"

"I've got better things to do with my free time than play with my tits."

"What a waste. You've got such a nice pair. Speaking of development, your quads and calves are looking beefier. Turn around." Rin studied Sousuke's backside and pressed his fingers on both sides of his spine, running them up to his traps. "Glutes and hams look good. Spine seems more stable too. Have you been upping your squat? Lifting more in general?"

"Yeah. I slacked off while I was transferring so I'm trying to get back up to speed."

"High bar or low bar?"

"Front mostly. Wanted to try something different."

Rin took the meat of Sousuke's thigh in his hands and squeezed it. "Huh. Not bad. I'll take your measurements when we get back to the dorm. Have you been keeping your journal up to date?"

"Not all of us document our bodies as obsessively as you do. If you really want something to measure, I've got it right here." Sousuke grabbed his cock and waggled it.

"You fuck right off with that." Rin gave him a friendly shove.

"What, you don't want to see if you measure up? Afraid your pride'll get hurt?"

"No, I don't want you to get an inferiority complex when you see The Megalodon at full power. I've ruined too many good folk already. Doesn't matter if you're man or woman, straight or gay, once you lay eyes on the beast, you're hooked for life."

"Looks more like a guppy than a beast to me."

"That's what they all say in the beginning."

Sousuke left the assertion uncontested and resumed washing, finishing Rin's torso and turning him around to work his back with the same steady pace that had served him thus far. Once he was through with Rin's buttocks, he sudsed up the cloth more and delved into the cleft between them. Rin didn't mind until he felt a finger pop out of the confines of the cloth and swipe up the length of his crack to the small of his back.

He shied from the touch with a nervous chuckle. "Easy with the fingers there, pal."

"It slipped."

"It better not 'slip' again or else I might find my fist 'slipping' into your teeth, yeah?"

"Yeah, yeah."

A few more wipes did the trick and Rin was about to ask what was next when Sousuke reached around his waist and took his cock in hand. He jolted as if electrocuted, but forced himself to calm down and play off the shock.

"I know you want to feel up my amazing dick, but there are these things called 'boundaries.' Maybe you've heard of them. We try not to cross 'em."

Sousuke's hand fell away. "Don't blame me if your underwear starts to smell like sewage."

The thought turned Rin's stomach. He was certain that he'd already lost a pair of underwear to the stench and didn't want to add more casualties than necessary. "Fine, do it quick."

Sousuke lathered up his hand and wrapped it around Rin's cock, pulling it in languid, twisting strokes. Every time he reached the end of a stroke with one hand, the other was instantly at the root of his cock to keep the sensation constant, making Rin squirm more with each subsequent tug. The feeling of the sudsy hands working him was unreal, beyond anything he'd ever done to himself. His heartbeat pounded in his ears and cock, the familiar warm rush of blood surging down his veins and swirling in the base of his prick. No, this wasn't the time for that. He forced his mind elsewhere, to thoughts of his sister and shopping and the maths assignment due in two days. Gou had sent him a picture of a nearby shop selling a shirt he'd became enamoured with after seeing it in GQ Japan and it reminded him of why he loved her and what the hell was Sousuke doing

He was ripped from his escape as he looked down and saw Sousuke's index finger pressing into the snug space between his prick and foreskin. Sousuke swirled his finger around the shaft, thrusting deeper until the cockskin had devoured his finger whole. Rin never imagined his foreskin could stretch that much and longed for the innocent times when he didn't know it could.

"You're supposed to be washing me, not giving me a wristy!" Rin protested, digging his elbows into Sousuke's stomach to try to give himself some space. "And you shouldn't be standing that close! I can feel your dick rubbing against me. It's gross."

"I'm just trying to be thorough. It's worked for everything else, hasn't it?"

Rin couldn't argue with the results, no matter how much admitting them hurt. The stench had lessened considerably since the shower began.

Sousuke retracted his finger and reached between Rin's thighs to tickle his taint before applying another layer of soap and cupping Rin's balls in one hand, the other stroking him as it had before. Rin bit his lip with a hiss, jerking his hips back against Sousuke in a futile attempt to flee. There it was, the thing he'd been trying to ignore, sandwiched neatly between his asscheeks. Sousuke's dick. Seeing it was one thing, he'd seen it a hundred times when they were kids and a few dozen more since Sousuke had come to Samezuka, touching it was another thing entirely. Before he could pull away, Sousuke was rolling his ballsack with the calloused pad of his thumb and the subtle drag had Rin's sperm churning up a storm in his nuts. His cock swelled out of control, sucking the blood straight from his brain into the depths of his dick. The dew point had been reached, dong saturation levels were critical.

Sousuke stopped working the shaft to toy with his pisshole instead, rubbing it until it flared and began oozing a stream of cloudy precum that he swiped up with his thumb and forefinger and rubbed into the hard pink helmet of Rin's cock. Rin pressed back into Sousuke again, unable to escape his touch. He pushed down on Sousuke's forearms, trying to free himself, but the hands on his junk remained firm and did something that had him arching into Sousuke, squeezing his cock between his powerful glutes.

Sousuke laughed in Rin's ear, close enough for him to hear his vocal cords humming. "Looks like I get to see The Megalodon in action."

"Fuck off." Rin tried to will his boner away, but it was useless. His nuts had long been his weak spot and this was the best attention they'd received in ages. "How much longer are you going to take?"

"Afraid you're gonna cum? I won't judge you if you do. Shit happens."

Rin's restraint snapped. He extracted his balls from Sousuke's grip and rounded on him, backing him into the shower wall. He planted his hands on either side of him and stared him dead in the eye. "You sound like you'd like that. Got something to tell me?"

"I'm not the one with a hardon from having another guy's hands on me."

"That's rich coming from the guy who's jerking me off and rubbing his dick all over me."

"I'm only doing it because I have to. You're clearly the one who's enjoying this."

The cooler than thou smirk that crept onto Sousuke's face sent Rin's fury spiking higher. Someone needed to take this bastard down a peg. His memory blinked back to their childhood roughhousing and he remembered the one trick that sent Sousuke home crying without fail.

He grabbed Sousuke by his nipples and squeezed until his knuckles were white and shaking. Sousuke yelped, startling himself with the sound and clapping his hand to his mouth as he pressed himself into the wall, trying to slip away from the assault through a crack in the grout. His eyes glistened with pain as Rin varied the pressure on him, changing the pitch of the moans he shouted into his palm.

Below the lines of Sousuke's Adonis belt, another limb stirred.

If smug could kill, Rin knew his jagged grin would've murdered Sousuke a dozen times over.

"What's this? Man, you practically had to give me a handjob to get me up and all I had to do was give you a little pinch." He alternated long tugging draws, ushering the nubs to their full length. "No, wait, I know what you are. You're a heifer that needs a good milking."

"Rin," Sousuke said, his tone muffled but warning.

"What? Afraid you're gonna cum? No worries."

Rin eased up, giving the nipples a soft apologetic rub. Sousuke relaxed, his breathing settling into a more even rhythm, tears of pain subsiding as Rin massaged his pecs. There was an inexplicable cuteness to the sight. He wished he had a camera to preserve this moment forever, to look back and feel the same surge of gratifying power in bringing a big man this low. Sousuke thought he was so damned tough. Rin knew better. His fingers found Sousuke's nipples again and wrenched them in opposite directions. Sousuke's cock sprung between them, smacking into Rin's and making them both shudder.

"Shit happens."

Sousuke pried one of Rin's hands from his chest and forced it down on his cock. It pulsed in his grasp, solid and yearning with a subtle upward curve. The cockhead trembled where it met his wrist, tiny bloblets of precum glazing the arteries burning beneath his skin.

"If you're going to milk me, at least do it properly."

Rin yanked free and resumed assaulting Sousuke's chest. "Stupid cow, the milk comes from here!"

He tugged on Sousuke's swollen teats, dispensing a guttural moan that rang along the ceiling. Sousuke sunk his fingers into the meaty thickness of Rin's asscheeks and pulled them apart to expose the darkened crevasse between. His rubbed his forefinger over Rin's shithole, teasing it with the tip of his nail while the rest of his fingers kneaded his glutes.

"Why're you grabbing my ass? Want a piece?"

"Maybe."

"You would, you fuckin fag." Rin pushed Sousuke's nipples in with his thumbs. "But you can't have it. I'm too good for an animal like you."

Half the pressure on his ass subsided and Rin smiled. He had Sousuke on the run. Suddenly there was a colossal _SMACK!_ as Sousuke's palm crashed into him, sending a blossom of warm pain spreading across his buttock. Rin cocked his arm back and slapped him in the tit, nailing the swollen nipple with expert precision and making Sousuke crumple against him. He pushed him up, making the distance between their chests as nonexistent as the one between Sousuke and the wall. Their wet dicks slid across each other's stomachs, sending hot shivers through their body when they bumped into one another. Rin felt his nuts kiss Sousuke's, both sacks bursting with unspent seed begging for release and it was that more than anything else that made him realize the situation may have gotten out of hand. A simple shower had become a game of chicken where he couldn't tell who was winning.

Another slap from Sousuke knocked him from his train of thought and answered that question as he felt his cock spit a burst of precum. The hand came again and again and again, striking the same spot over and over. Each spank brought a fresh sting of pain that bled into the previous ache, building up a deep-seated burn that had Rin dancing on the balls of his feet as he tried to dodge the incoming strikes.

He knew he'd lose if he didn't act quickly and dove back into his memories in search of Sousuke's weak spots. He'd already covered the purple nurples. His feet were dangerously ticklish—he remembered the time when Kisumi had tickled the literal piss out of him during a sleepover and Sousuke had refused to talk to him for a full week afterwards—but there was no way of getting to those in this position. He hated having his aunt pinch his cheeks, but that was nothing more than an annoyance. He scoured the seams of his memory for any hint, but thinking was hard when his ass was being bombarded by the unending onslaught of Sousuke's palm. What was that other damned thing?

Sousuke wound up for his finishing blow and the memory flashed through Rin's mind so quick he barely had time to register it.

Feverish with delight, he wrapped his hands around Sousuke's neck and sunk his teeth into the tender flesh of his ear. Sousuke bucked against him, spraying thick ropes of sperm onto Rin's belly that he smeared with his spasming cock. His fingers dug bruises into Rin's ass, rocking their hips together in an attempt to prolong the orgasm as his balls pumped out spurt after spurt of warm cum. The low whine trailing from his throat sounded like victory to Rin.

Rin stepped back and licked the splotch of red staining his mouth while Sousuke gingerly wiped his bleeding ear.

There was an uncomfortable silence filled by the whisper of the shower.

"You serious?" He gestured at his stomach. "I feel like a grotty motel sheet."

Sousuke's softening prick gave a final hurrah, sending a weak spurt to join the rest.

"Go on. It's your mess. Why don't you lick it up?"

He didn't think Sousuke had heard him at first. His breath was heavy and deep, his eyes dazed and unfocused. Then he went down on his knees, seized Rin by the hips, and began to lap up the jizz spattered across the plates of his abdominals.

"Whoa, hey! I was kidding!" Rin wedged his fingers under Sousuke's hands and unsuccessfully tried to pry them off. "I can't believe you ate it. That's disgusting."

"Like you've never done it."

"No, I'm not a homo like you." Rin was relieved Sousuke finally said something, even if the cum eating was kind of fucked up. "You look hungry though, gonna give me a blowie while you're in the neighbourhood?"

"Not for free." Sousuke side-eyed Rin's cock. "You're straining pretty hard. How long's it been?"

"I think it was last 'none of your business.' I'm a busy guy. Sometimes it's hard to find a good time to take care of yourself."

"If you can't find the time, make it. History's always been my go to."

Revulsion and awe mingled in Rin's mind. "For real?"

"Everyone's either asleep or wishing they were at the gym. Haven't been caught yet."

"I'd hate to see the bottom of your desk."

"My desk's fine. I shoot in my pants and clean up during lunch."

Sousuke's reluctance to mix their laundry suddenly made much more sense. "That's your thing, eh? Being in public? Wouldn't have guessed that."

"Nah, it's just a way to kill time. What'd you think it was?"

"Either dressing up like a cute little girl or snuff."

"Close, it's both at the same time. Wearing a skirt makes the murder more satisfying. Be a good big brother and watch _Guinea Pig_ with me."

"Never again. I had nightmares for weeks. Fuck your dad for having it, fuck you for making me watch it."

"It wasn't that bad. Kisumi liked it. Now are you gonna take care of that or do I have to do everything for you?"

"You could at least pretend you're not desperate to suck me off. But I get it. Another guy falls prey to The Megalodon's awesome power. Don't say I didn't warn you." Rin angled his hips up and swept his hand in a grandiose arc over his cock. "So what d'you think?"

Sousuke took The Megalodon in his hand, reverence in his gaze and the pretty line of his mouth shaped into a kiss. Rin's breath stopped as Sousuke's lips hovered over his cock. They had taken a pitstop in familiar territory but they were tearing straight back into _'holy fuck what the fuck are we doing'-_ istan at fifty over the limit with busted brakes. The thought of Sousuke being anything but straight had never occurred to him yet here he was, prepped to take a cock in the mouth like it was part of his usual Monday routine. Not just any old cock, _his_ cock. He didn't know if he wanted it or hated it or if he was dreaming this entire day.

Sousuke opened his mouth.

Rin felt his nuts tighten.

Sousuke hocked a massive loogie on The Megalodon and sat back on his heels, looking satisfied with himself. It took every fibre of restraint in Rin's being to not kick his head straight off.

Instead he snatched him by the hair and shoved his sullied prick in his face. "Clean it up."

Sousuke's jaw fell open, exposing his lolling tongue. It was fat and pink and Rin could see past it to the uvula dangling in the cavernous expanse of his throat. He could fuck Sousuke's mouth like an animal. The idea struck him with the force of a freight train and crowded out every other thought that had been there before. All he had to do was shove it in and make sure he didn't bite. He could see it, could see himself jamming his cock into Sousuke's throat and making him gag for it, could see his lips stretched over his shaft as he begged for a taste of cream. He remembered how he teased Sousuke for having such a big mouth as kids, when he was stupid and didn't know what a blessing that was for a future faggot. He bet that Sousuke could deepthroat on the first go. He would suck him down to his nuts and swallow on him, smother him with his windpipe like a good cocksleeve and eat his cum without being asked.

All he had to do was stick it in. Sousuke wouldn't say no. Not when he looked so hungry for a dicking. That face was begging for it.

He snapped out of his reverie seconds later, unnerved he could think such things.

"I was kidding again, idiot. Like I'd want your stupid mouth on my dick." Rin laughed, stifling his nerves. He wiped the snotty spit off his cock and smeared it across Sousuke's face. "Hurry up and finish so I can take care of this."

Rin shook his hand clean and wrapped it around his cock as Sousuke picked up the washcloth to resume work. Most of the strange mood had passed, but The Megalodon bobbed in Sousuke's face and it was hard for Rin to tell where he was looking. He guided his cock to the side, away from the lust magnet of Sousuke's stupidly huge mouth.

"Quit staring at me, weirdo. You like my dick that much?"

Sousuke rolled his eyes and busied himself washing Rin's kneepit.

Getting worked back up was easy for Rin when he was hard like this and it only took a couple minutes for him to reapproach climax. He heard a whimper slip past his lips and a soft chuckle reminded him that even though Sousuke backed off to give him space, he was still in the room. Whether it was to have a giggle at his expense or to add references to his fapbank he wasn't sure, though he hoped it was the former. Refusing to let himself come completely unraveled in front of Sousuke, he locked his teeth together and choked back a whine as the surge of chemicals sent him spiraling higher and higher, his jerking growing more frantic as he felt his balls tighten, working his cock faster and harder and more desperate as the urge to blow his load consumed him and suddenly he was plunging screaming into the familiar freefall ending in that blissful little death

He pressed his thumb to his cockhole but the cum would not be dammed, squirting past the blockade in a v-shaped stream and dribbling down his fingers and he stroked himself again, making the good hurt, squirting harder and giving up trying to stop it, letting it spray as it pleased as he fucked his hand until his knees went weak and he felt himself toppling, grabbing for faraway walls as the white-tiled floor rushed to meet him. Something seized him by the waist and held him upright before he could hit and all Rin could do was keep cumming and cumming, watching his cock spew beyond the thick forearms locked around him, watching his jizz eddy the drain. His vision blackened around the edges and for a moment he thought he was going to pass out, but whispers of _'I've got you, I've got you_ ' kept him conscious until it was over and he was left a panting wreck.

Sousuke eased him to the ground and turned off the shower.

"Guess that one's been a long time coming," Rin said with a faint laugh, letting his body slacken into the tiles. "Man."

He stared at the streaks of white marking his fingers.

Sousuke cleaned them too.

 

By the time they had dried off and checked their phones, all afternoon classes, clubs, and team meetings had been cancelled due to safety concerns. According to the bulletin, the faculty suspected there was either a sewage or gas leak and students were to return to their dorms for the rest of the day. Part of Rin was relieved even though he knew he didn't stink any more, which was the thing he was most grateful for, followed by the change of underwear Sousuke had brought with him. He threw the pair he'd been wearing in the bin and saluted them for their service before rejoining Sousuke so they could figure out how to spend their day off.

"You should put something heavier on." Sousuke gestured to Rin's choice of trunks, a tanktop, and nothing else.

"I would if someone hadn't puked on the rest of my clothes."

Sousuke tossed his uniform jacket at him. "Spare the rest of us, please."

Rin shrugged it on, stepped into his red high-tops, and sprinted ahead to the exit. He bent over and flicked up the tail of the jacket, showing off the toned expanse of his legs and ass with a shake of his hips. "Afraid you'll get turned on?"

Sousuke kneed him in the bum, pushing him out of the doorway. "I don't want to be responsible for people getting blinded when they see you."

"By my brilliance, right? You know how to flatter a guy."

"Punch Kisumi for me the next time you see him. He's rubbing off on you."

Rin laughed and fell into step beside Sousuke.

They made it about ten metres before a gang of bins waddled in from their periphery and circled them. They varied in size and function, from the small ones used for paper in the classrooms and dorms to the large recycling bins for PET, aluminum, and glass. Bags bulging with combustible waste hopped after them until there was nothing but rubbish as far as the eye could see. The lead bin—marked PET—flipped up its lid as if in invitation. Rin walked over and looked inside, expecting to see one of the members of the swim club. Nothing but trash. He leaned closer, wondering if they were hiding under the multicoloured pile of bottles.

The bin snapped shut on his neck.

He shouted and flailed blindly at the sides of the container, kicking it as the blunt metal squeezed his throat. Spots danced across his vision as the vise grip tightened, making him sputter and cough. Another metal mouth clamped down on his feet, lifting him up as he gasped through his nose, desperate for breath. They carried him between the two of them, hopping away from the group towards a low rumbling noise. The bin holding his head let him go and he pulled free, sucking in air as he looked around. Sousuke was on the ground being mobbed by bins and bags, head ducked low, legs thrashing. He started to call for him, but the bin holding him by the feet swung him into the air, sending him cartwheeling into a waiting dumpster. The lid slammed down, blacking out the sky.

Sousuke kicked off the pile of bags atop him and jumped to his feet in time to see Rin land in the dumpster. He vaulted over the bins and wrenched the lid open, getting a glimpse of Rin before it snapped shut and took off like a shot.

Sousuke charged after it, arms and legs pumping at full strength, eyes trained square on his target as he tried to gauge the moment to strike. The dumpster slowed for the briefest second as it rolled over a wayward baseball bat. He lunged and caught it by the handle, clutching tight as he ran faster, faster, faster to the point his shoes started skipping beats on the pavement to stay standing. Unbound by human limits, the dumpster kept accelerating, rolling faster, faster until keeping up with it was too much to handle and his feet were torn out from beneath him.

His slacks offered scant protection from the pavement, shredding from the friction and giving way to flesh. His legs burned wetly as the skin was scraped away, but he refused to let go, driven on by Rin's defiant shouts. Getting solid footing became his first priority. It would give him a better position to determine what he needed to do to free Rin. He hooked an elbow onto the lid's rim and began dragging himself upward. If he could just get on top of it, he could make sure it didn't take off somewhere he couldn't follow. He flung his arm up, reaching for the top of the lid.

The dumpster swung a quick, tight turn, tearing its handle free from Sousuke's grasp, slinging him into the unforgiving concrete. Agony exploded through his shoulder as it took the brunt of the blow and he couldn't help but scream as a familiar stabbing throb ripped through his arm. Gasping and teary-eyed, he writhed on the ground, chest aching as he cursed at the sky. When the worst of the pain subsided, he caught his breath in a shuddering hitch and tried to stand. It took a few attempts, but he finally managed to get himself upright. His legs were bloodied from the knee down, casualties of the long drag, and his muscles burned with fatigue as he staggered towards the fleeing dumpster, which was spinning mocking circles through the courtyard.

Throat clogged with fury, he howled incoherent noise at the thing to get its attention. The dumpster whipped about and blindsided him, launching him skyward.

His head collided with the concrete and the inverted world, full of shapeless, swirling blotches, swam in and out of sight. He heard a thud against plastic accompanied by a slew of bilingual profanity, heard someone calling his name, heard the roll of casters as the dumpster left him behind, but it was useless. Nausea and pain overwhelmed his mind simultaneously.

He closed his eyes in defeat.

 

The interior of the dumpster was disgusting. Not that Rin expected much from any wastebin, but this was a particular brand of repulsive. Someone had pitched all sorts of trash in willy-nilly rather than sorting it out, leaving him trapped in a festering soup of food waste, plastic, and paper. What little clothing he had on was soaked through with garbage juice, putting him back how he started the day: a stinking mess. He had no idea what was going on outside and could only speculate. There had been thudding and Sousuke's voice but now there was nothing but the sound of the dumpster itself, rolling around at speeds better suited for a Formula One car. He tried not to assume to worst, but it was hard to think anything else.

The rumble of the wheels stopped. Rin tested the lid, but it remained steadfastly shut. Perhaps it had settled down enough to be in a talking mood.

"Is this because of the bin in the hallway? Or the one at the relay last year?"

The dumpster rattled its fittings in what Rin assumed was the affirmative.

"I'm sorry. I was being an asshole. If there's any way for me to make it up to you, I'm willing to listen."

There was a long silence.

The lid opened.

Rin ditched his wariness to scramble over to the rim and met the sight of a clear sky. Nothing but the sky, in fact. Dread prickled the hair on his neck as he looked down. The Samezuka campus had been reduced to a geometric collections of greens and greys far below him. His stomach lurched into his throat and he tried not to guess how high he was or how much higher it intended to take him.

"Whoa, hey, look, I'm sorry! You don't have to do this! I swear I'm going to respect you guys from now on! How am I supposed to apologize if you drop me? I am so, so sorry, so please—"

It was the initial millisecond of weightlessness that made him realize that nothing he said mattered. Whatever he'd pissed off was incapable of forgiveness.

The dumpster fell.

 

Sousuke regained consciousness, unsure of how much time had passed. A white hare sat on its haunches before him, its black-tipped ears flicked forward as it sniffed him out. He chuckled, painfully aware of how pathetic he must look if something that skittish wasn't afraid to approach him. He stretched a few fingers towards it, wondering if it would let him pet it.

The hare leapt at his face in a flurry of claws and teeth and he flinched as light flooded his vision. When his sight returned, he found himself engulfed in a pale, undulating fire. The pain that wracked his body had vanished along with the hare, though the wounds remained. Groaning, he dragging himself to his feet and examined his surroundings. There was no sign of Rin or the dumpster anywhere.

Instinct compelled him to look up. He saw a rectangular streak plummeting towards the ground like a meteorite and before he could blink, it hit. Casters exploded off in four separate directions and he heard a distinct _THUMP_ followed by a gut-wrenching sob. Fueled with single-minded determination, he sprinted towards the dumpster as it reassembled itself. In the time it took him to bridge half the distance, the dumpster had noticed and bullrushed him on its clattering casters. They collided head-on, Sousuke's outstretched arms catching the wide prow as he hardened his stance, resisting its efforts to topple him.

Strength fortified by the energies swirling around him, he advanced one step, then another, grinning as the bin snapped its lid at him like a wounded dog. The dumpster realized it no longer had the advantage and backed up in preparation for a new charge. Sousuke sprang for the kill, swinging his fist high and bringing it down on the lid with a thunderous crash. A spark erupted from the impact and spiraled outward in a whirl of flame that surged over him, roaring in his ears. Just as suddenly, the fires died and there was nothing. The monster had gone quiet. He pushed it, but it didn't push back.

He had won.

Sousuke lifted the lid of the dumpster, bringing daylight into its confines. Rin squinted up at him, wreathed in garbage and slime and bruised badly.

"Hey."

"How's it going? You like my new place? It's a little cramped, but it's got all the necessities. Even came with free food." Rin offered up a chunk of soggy udon noodles. "Not hungry? That's cool. Me neither."

He flung the noodles into the corner and took the hand Sousuke offered him, crawling out of the trash like a massive rat.

"You look like hell," Rin said with a crooked grin and began laughing, though it soon turned into sobs of relief.

"You too."

"I thought I was done for." Rin wiped his face on the least dirty part of his arm. "Saw my life flash before my eyes and everything."

"I'd never let you die on my watch."

"Good looking out."

They exchanged a fistbump before the exhaustion caught up with Sousuke all at once and he collapsed into Rin.

—

"How you feeling?"

"I'm fine. Don't worry about it."

"You cracked your head open, it's not fine!"

The look Sousuke gave Rin suggested that he'd crack his head open if he kept pushing the issue.

It was a day after the bincident and word had spread fast about how the swim team's captain, covered more in trash than clothes, had been spotted dragging a bloodied and unconscious teammate to the infirmary. It was the noteworthy event on campus since the tennis team swept regionals and theories multiplied quicker than bacteria, spurred on by a lack of clear information. Rin waved off any inquiries by saying it was complicated while Sousuke had explained it as it happened, excluding the bit where the magic rabbit gave him superpowers because he thought that sounded too ludicrous, but even then it had been mostly regarded as delusions brought on by his injuries.

For those who believed Sousuke's story, ridiculous as it was, Rin's sensuality took on a memetic status and he was proclaimed a god among men, capable of seducing even mundane objects. Letters professing love and admiration inundated his shoe locker until it was bursting at the hinges. He'd been catcalled everywhere he went and though the attention was flattering, he was sick of it by the end of practice and hoped that something else happened soon so they could go back to acting like their usual stupid selves.

"Are you listening to me? Concussions are serious business."

"You fell ten stories. A bump on the head is nothing in comparison to that."

"Yeah, I got banged up, but I don't have brain damage from it!" Rin ignored the twinge of pain in his neck. "I can't believe you tried to get in the pool. Or went to class for that matter. You should be resting."

"It's just a concussion. I'll live. And for the record, there's nothing wrong with me going to class even if I'm barred from sports for a while."

"What'd we talk about in Maths today? I wasn't paying attention."

Sousuke paused. "Numbers."

"And English? You know that's always a drag for me."

"Words." Noticing the swell of anger in Rin's expression, Sousuke turned away and started off down the hall on his own. "It's fine. I'm fine."

Rin stepped in front of him and planted a hand in the middle of his chest. "Don't tell me you're fine because you're trying to be cool. Never forget that you're an athlete. You have one job: take care of yourself. Without your body, you're nothing. No career, no future, nothing."

"You think I don't know that?" Sousuke retorted. "I don't need you lecturing me on how to take care of myself!"

"What, you're mad because I'm right? The world's not gonna end if you take it easy for a few days to recover."

"Maybe I'd be more prone to taking your advice if you followed it yourself." Sousuke pushed Rin's hand off him. "You should be dead right now and you're walking around like nothing happened."

"I can't ditch my responsibilities because I'm feeling a little sore, but I can adjust what I do so I don't make it hard on myself in the future. Why do you think I didn't swim today? It's not 'cause I didn't want to." Rin's voice softened. "Promise me that you'll take care of yourself. That's all I'm asking."

Sousuke exhaled through his nose. "Fine. I promise. Can I have my bag back?"

"No, your shoulder is as jacked up as your head is. I saw it in the shower this morning."

"You're overreacting." Sousuke reached for his duffel bag for the dozenth time that afternoon, but Rin sidestepped him. "I landed hard on it, what'd you expect?"

"It shouldn't be that swollen. Did you make sure to stretch? Take meds?"

"Yes, ma."

"Don't 'ma' me, cunt. We'll ice it when we get home and then you're going to get some rest," Rin said, leaving no room for argument.

"Why not kiss it better while you're at it?"

"Kissing's the last resort. It's worse than surgery."

"Do I get to pick where you kiss me?"

"You'll take it where I give it and you'll like it."

Sousuke cracked a smile, then keeled off to one side.

Rin caught him on the way down and rerighted him. "We're going to the nurse."

"It'll pass. I just need to sit down for a bit."

Rin guided him to a bench and eased him into a reclining position. "I'll get you something to drink. Try not to die."

He hurried to a nearby vending machine, fished a few coins out of his pocket, and selected a bottled water. The machine hummed as it processed the order, then beeped and showed a red X on the display. He tried picking other products and jabbing the coin eject and got nothing for it. No matter what he pushed, the error display remained. He pounded his fist on the machine's side in hopes of dislodging either his money or his drink.

"Should you really be hitting things after what happened yesterday?"

"I wouldn't have to hit it if it'd give me my damn drink!"

Rin kicked it below the dispenser, reckoning that that would do the trick.

All the buttons lit up one after another, flickering furiously as the vending machine began to rumble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The titular spookfish is in reference to certain members of the Chimaeriforme order, not to be confused with the Opisthoproctidae family, which are also referred to as 'spookfish.'
> 
> EDIT: Due to a critical research failure, I have readjusted the Spookfish timeline that I initially proposed to better fit with the ES timeline. The story now starts ~3 weeks into April and takes course over the spring/summer of Rin and Sousuke's third year. I'm currently revising my outline to minimize interference with the prefectural (late June) and regional swim (early August) tournaments. Even though it probably doesn't matter to the reader, it matters to me. Plus it allows for the bonus winter break short to not be bound by the time constraints the original draft had.
> 
> Assorted minutiae: In Sousuke's drawing the shark is the one driving the motorcycle. Sousuke's PT has approved squatting low bar as long as he uses a safety bar, but he didn't want Rin to ask questions so he switched to squatting front instead. An example of [merengue rhythm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krY4peyuMgs) for Rin's pec bouncing. The trunks Sousuke brings for Rin are from [2(x)ist](https://www.2xist.com/p/041933/double-diamond-no-show-trunk.html). They match his black/green jogging suit, show off lots of his delicious thighs, and the color combination best accents the shoes he's wearing in that scene, which are one of his pairs of red high-tops. I recall reading speculation that they are Supra Vaiders, but as a guy who's not well-versed in fashion it's hard for me to pinpoint which model. The 'purse' Sousuke refers to in the beginning is a [Louis Vuitton Keepall Bandouliere 55](http://jp.louisvuitton.com/jpn-jp/products/keepall-bandouliere-55-damier-graphite-000208) and the scarf is the infamous 'why does a 12 year-old in a poor fishing town have a piece of clothing that costs 73k yen?' [Burberry scarf](https://jp.burberry.com/the-classic-cashmere-scarf-in-heritage-check-p39295221) from S1. The dustbox/dumpster/wheelie bin/skip that Rin is trapped in at the end is a [Kaisuimaren J2000C Jumbo Station](http://www.kaisuimaren.co.jp/_1eco/eco_j1500g/eco_j1500g.html) and the total distance he fell was approximately 30m. He remained conscious upon impact through the grace of god, passed out shortly after arriving in the infirmary with Sousuke, and has a mild case of shock and whiplash to go with his numerous bruises. Statistically speaking, the odds of him actually surviving a fall of that magnitude are sub-5%, but he had someone watching out for him, so he's fine. If you look at Samezuka's campus layout, they do indeed have tennis courts and presumably a tennis team.
> 
> Fondest regards to Ash for giving the draft a once-over and for checking my dick-naming game since, as you stated, "His dick is clearly named 'The Megalodon.'" It is much better than what I had before.
> 
> I'm glad to have this chapter out of the way since that means I can go full blast on the eroticism and lewdness from this point onward. Please be prepared for erodoujin logic, 95% of the story functions on it.
> 
> Criticism is not only welcome, but encouraged, and I'll answer any questions that you have.  
> 8 February 2016  
> \- 匿名重工業


	2. Rise of the Toys (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The swim club is full of degenerates (and Rin tries to pretend he's not one of them). 
> 
> Sousuke accepts the debauchery for what it is.

Rin surveyed the line of swimmers, trying to pretend the splatter of purpleblack bruises spread over his stomach didn't hurt when he breathed. He could tell they wanted to ask, but he wasn't about to explain that a possessed vending machine had pelted him with drinks until Sousuke beat it into submission. They would think he had a few roos loose in the top paddock.

"Coach is out with a cold, so it's just us for today and tomorrow. This does _not_ mean you get to slack off and dick around. If anything, I'll be driving you harder than he ever did." Rin gave a pointed look at Nakagawa, who stood straighter in his spot. The other swimmers in the bottom tiers of the group shuffled in place like cattle awaiting slaughter. "But before we get started, I have to address an issue brought up to me by the faculty. There have been reports of inappropriate materials being carried around campus and as such, all club leaders have been instructed to search their team's lockers and bags for contraband.

"If you are carrying any of these materials, you will be dealt with as the principal and Coach see fit, no exceptions. If you get punished, I expect you to take it like a man. Are we on the same page?" He resisted the urge to smile as they shouted a unified _'Yes, Captain!'_ This was the part of being in charge that made it worth it, this unflinching respect and attention. "Bags out!"

Rin poised his pen over his clipboard as he stopped at the beginning of the line in front of a first-year who'd been in the club a fortnight. He clenched the strap of his bag, refusing to relinquish it. Rulebreaker confirmed. He had hoped he wouldn't find one so quickly.

"How come you aren't inspecting Yamazaki's bag? He's here, isn't he? I saw him in the locker room."

Rin humored the question since it would've been asked sooner or later. "I already did, that's why he's in charge of inspecting lockers. It's more efficient than me doing everything by myself. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not waste an entire practice looking for contraband."

"How do we know you're not covering for him? You two are such good friends and all."

"When we're on the clock, Sousuke's a teammate first, friend second. I treat him the same as I treat any of you."

"Why's he guaranteed a spot in the next tourney even though this'll be the second day in a row he doesn't swim? He's not going to swim tomorrow either, is he? How about the day after that? Why's he get to take it easy?"

Rin felt his hackles rising, but steeled himself into a neutral expression. What did this kid know about Sousuke's work ethic?

"First off, he's not guaranteed anything. He didn't get nationally ranked by sitting around bitching about teammates. He worked his ass off to get where he is. If you want a spot in regionals, you'd better earn it. Second, he's got a concussion. He's barred from swimming fly for a week and free for two, which should give you plenty of time to get started on chiseling down your 100m. Got it?"

"Yeah, I get it. You cover his ass. He plows yours," the kid mutters it low enough for only Rin and the guy standing next to him to hear. "I know that kind of thing flies in Australia, but even a returnee should know there's no place for that here."

"You wanna repeat that, kid?"

"I mean, all I'm saying is if you're searching our bags in front of everyone, then that means everyone on the team should be participating." He lowered his voice again. "No exceptions, not even for your boyfriend."

Rin grabbed their bags and dropped them at the first-year's feet. "Here's mine. Here's his. I'll let you do the honors."

Rin's bag carried the necessities: clothes, a spare pair of goggles, a comb, a waterbottle, and a post-training protein shake. Sousuke's bag was identical minus the comb plus several books: _The Care and Training of Domestic Rabbits, Shinto Rites and Rituals, Introductory Buddhism, The Big Encyclopedia of Japanese Yokai, A History of Exorcism Throughout East Asia,_ and _Limit Breaker: Banishing Butt Winks and Other Bad Lifting Habits._

The kid stared at the books, confused. _  
_

"Don't ask me, I don't know. Hand over your bag."

Rin cracked open the main zipper and found a freshly opened pack of Lucky Strikes sitting at the top. The kid narrowed his eyes at Rin as though it was his fault they were there.

"Were you hoping you could kick up enough of a fuss that I'd call the whole thing off? Honestly," Rin muttered as he rummaged through the bag. "Spouting all that nonsense... Where's your lighter?"

The kid forked it over.

"Great. Get out."

"What?"

"I respect that you've got the balls to talk shit about me to my face, but I'm still your captain." Rin raised his voice, adding, "Coach'll figure out what he wants to do with you when he gets back, but until then, I don't want you within spitting distance of this pool. If you wanna poison yourself that's your prerogative, but don't bring that crap in here and act like you're a serious athlete."

The first-year bailed lighter than he'd arrived and Rin marked his clipboard accordingly before moving to the next man in line. Minami trudged forward, looking everywhere but at him. His duffel bag hit the ground with a muffled thud, sides bulging strangely. Rin guessed that he was carrying a king's ransom in snacks, though for all he knew it could've been an illegitimate child that he'd fathered with his cousin who had run away to Switzerland. His heart twinged at the thought of Minami forgoing university to take on a full-time job as a laborer and breaking his back every day to make ends meet while spending as much time with his son as possible to give him a proper upbringing and then meeting his true love in the form of an attractive elementary school teacher who loved and accepted him despite being a single father, only for the cousin to come back from Switzerland demanding custody of the child and waging a costly legal war on him that he had no hope of winning that the teacher breaks up by having a woman-to-woman chat with the cousin the night before the final verdict and everyone living happily ever after.

He knew it was probably snacks, but still.

Minami whispered, "Please, Captain. Don't do this. Not in front of everyone. I'll do anything."

"Sorry, Coach's orders."

The note he'd found in the office was concise but clear. The only way to make an example of rulebreakers was to let their indiscretions be seen. Rin bent down and unzipped the bag. Massive mottled hunks of silicone with saucer-shaped heads and bases run through with clear plastic tubes greeted him. Their shape was too alien to recognize at first glance, but as soon as he pulled one out he understood.

They were horse dildos.

"What the fuck?!" He flung the oversized sex toy as far away as he could. It landed in the pool with a splash, saluting the team as it sank.

The other swimmers burst into a laughing fit that grew higher and more hysterical with each new dildo's emergence until they were on their knees in tears and there was a stack of twenty-three horsedicks accompanied by nine bottles of a product labeled 'cumlube.' He wished it had been an illegitimate child. Minami appeared to be praying for the earth to devour him whole and Rin couldn't blame him, considering he was about to get the rep of being a magician with a neverending bag of dicks.

He cycled through a set of appropriate responses in his head before settling on, "I need to talk to you for a second."

"Captain, please don't be mad at Kaz—" Uozumi butted in.

"It's fine, Takuya. Worry about yourself." Minami gave him a weak smile and followed Rin.

Rin took a couple dozen steps away from the group, racking his brain to figure how to best broach the subject. None of his research into leadership had given him an idea of how to handle this. Should he be stern? Supportive? No, not supportive, he couldn't support rulebreaking, but he couldn't outright condemn him either. That'd make him think he was being singled out for liking dicks and Rin wasn't about to do that. What would Mikoshiba do?

"Listen," he started. Minami flinched and Rin felt his mood sink lower than it already had. One misstep and he'd be getting a letter of resignation first thing tomorrow. "I don't care what you do in your personal time. You're a grown man, you make your own decisions, and those decisions are none of my business. But when you bring this—" He stumbled to find the right word. "—this stuff to the pool, it becomes my business. Don't do it again and we won't have a problem. Fair enough?"

"Yeah. Thanks, Captain."

Rin glanced at the pile and before he could catch himself, asked, "Why do you even need that many?"

"Sometimes you want to use more than one. Or share them with others."

His sudden case of verbal diarrhea kept spewing forth unbidden. "If you can use more than one of those at a time, then I can swallow a frying pan. And how are you sharing that many? You setting up a sex party in the locker room?"

Minami glanced towards the pool. "It's not a _party_ per se..."

Rin waited for the punchline. There wasn't one. "You guys are—in the locker room? Why?"

"Stuff happens! A lot of guys are lonely and sometimes you need to liven things up and it started with magazines and AVs and—it's a long story and I don't think you want the details. Please don't confiscate them. I get discounts because my cousin works for the company, but they were still really expensive."

"Sorry, Seabiscuit, that's not my call." Rin turned to the team he had once been proud to claim as his. "Really, guys? We're one of the top ranked teams in the country and you're trading dildos after practice?"

"They're not all dildos. I brought AVs." Iwashimizu unzipped his bag and flashed a fully-loaded disc spindle.

Uozumi pulled a greyish tube out of his jacket. "I brought my Iron Ass Princess."

"I brought my copy of _IMMORAL Fairy_. It's good for morale boosting!" chirped Momo, holding it aloft as if it was Christ reborn.

"If you wanna 'boost morale' so bad, then do it in the dorms, not here!" Rin rounded on Nitori. "Did you know about this?"

"Iwashimizu said he'd loan me _Idol Decay_ if I didn't say anything!"

"I'm not gonna loan it to you now, snitch."

"Well," Rin said, resigned to spending the rest of the year knowing far more about his teammates' sexual predilections than he wanted to. "Let's see the damage."

A shocking number and variety of goods amassed before him: DVDs, magazines, insertables that shocked, buzzed, and thrusted, toys that licked and flicked, fleshlights a plenty, cum-crusted panties autographed by the gravure flavour of the month, rings, beads, clamps, pumps, thirteen different types of lotion, and a fuckable torso that promised "over 20 pounds of pussy and ass!!" There were items that he couldn't make heads or tails of but that he was sure were some kind of erotic apparatus, so he marked them on the board with _???_ and tossed them in with the rest. The pile's sheer size was a testament to the depth and breadth of their perversions.

"Apologize to the pool!" Rin commanded once he'd finished.

"Sorry, pool!" They added, "Sorry, Captain!" as an afterthought.

"Do you have any idea how this makes us look? The whole school's going to think we're a bunch of perverts!"

"The results aren't public, right? It's not that big a deal," said one of the second-years.

"I didn't want to mention it because I didn't think it'd be an issue, but I might as well now that you brought it up. They're making a list of the clubs with the highest amounts of contraband and putting it on the bulletin board. Everyone will know."

"Maybe we'll win!" Momo sounded hopeful.

Rin felt his last nerve wearing dangerously thin. "That's not something we want to win!"

"The wrestling team is nasty as hell, they'll probably be number one," said Iwashimizu. "I know a guy in there who has a big box of loli doujins under his bed."

"The literature club is full of smokers and the science club makes explosives for fun. It'll be fine!"

"Knowing that the other clubs are full of degenerates doesn't make me feel any better about ours." Rin pressed his face into his hand with a long sigh. "Everyone drop and give me fifty. You don't get to swim until you're finished and if you can't do fifty, then you get to stay after and clean the locker rooms. Ai, get the dildo out of the pool and then do fifty."

Collective groans spread through the team as they dropped and started doing their pushups. Minami broke from the group and approached Rin.

"I already know I'm going to be stuck after," he explained. "Hanging in there?"

If he meant 'hanging' in the 'by a rope round his neck' sense, Rin didn't think he'd mind that. "I have so many questions I don't want to know the answers to. I'm still trying to figure out what was with the book Mochida had."

"The one with Edo-era battles recreated with miniatures on girls' butts? It makes sense if you know him. History's always been his favourite subject."

"Who would publish that? Why would they publish that?"

"There are men who see unfilled niches in the world and say, 'I must fill it.'"

"That's great, but there's a point where you need to stop. So what's up? I don't think you came over here to talk about historical butts."

"I wanted to say that I don't hold the bag check against you. I didn't want to be outed like that, but it was my fault, so..." Minami rubbed the back of his neck. "Thanks for not making a big deal about it."

He guessed screaming and throwing a horse dick into the pool counted as not making a big deal. "I don't care if you kiss dudes, I care if you bring sex toys to practice. You guys are here to swim."

"Well, yeah, but I thought you might've gotten angry about it since it was... different from what they brought."

"I'm not going to get pissy because you brought in a dildo and then start high-fiving Midorijima for having that disembodied vagina thing. I'm not that kind of guy. Dildos are normal compared to some of that other shit." Rin paused. "Listen, I'm sorry. If this screws up your career or starts causing personal problems—"

"It's fine. I love swimming, but I know I'm not going pro, so it's not a big deal. Being a gay journalist is way easier than being a gay athlete."

"Tell me if anyone gives you a hard time. Nobody fucks with my—" An orange blur caught Rin's eye and he turned to see Momo terrorizing Nitori with one of the biggest dildos, a wobbling milky-white behemoth that could kill a man in a single fell blow. "Momo, put that down! You don't know where that's been!"

"Well, I haven't used that one yet."

"See, it's fine!"

"It's not fine!" Rin confiscated the toy, tucking it under his arm.

"That one glows in the dark," Minami said. "In case you were interested."

Momo fluttered around Rin at different angles, trying to get a glance of where his arm cast a shadow. "Can I—"

_"No."_

"I've got a pair of shark claspers that glows if you want to see that instead. Feel free to come over and check them out."

Rin thought it best to leave before he ended up with his own invitation to the dildo show.

By the time folks started getting in the water, Sousuke was bringing out the last of the contraband from the lockers, which consisted of a stack of porn mags half as tall as he was and a bottle claiming to be 'Real Pussy Juice Scent.' He tossed them into the bin bags they had requisitioned for the trip to the principal's office and handed over his clipboard to Rin, who could only shake his head as he went down the list.

"Can you believe these guys?"

Sousuke shrugged. "Sometimes you've got needs."

"Of course a serial classturbator would think that. Speaking of which, they bribed Ai to not say anything. They didn't happen to tempt you, did they?"

"They don't tell me anything they don't want you to know about."

"You sure about that? You're not hiding a bunch of whips and chains in there?" Rin hooked his finger into Sousuke's waistband and peeked inside. The grey and white slashes of his legskins smiled at him.

"I know, I know," Sousuke cut him off before he could arc up. "No swimming, running, lifting, or class until I've been cleared by a medical professional."

"I'm glad I managed to beat something into your thick skull for once. Why'd you put 'em on if you knew I wasn't going to let you swim? Are you becoming Haru Mk. 2? Am I going to have to start wrangling you out of fishtanks?"

"I had hoped you'd let me do a couple laps. I can't stand doing nothing."

"I know it kills you. It's killing me too."

A week without swimming was a miserable one and he'd amped up his running to fill the void, but Sousuke had no such outlet. He'd caught him doing a bodyweight routine within an hour of yesterday's dizzy spell and ended up taking him for a walk to work off his pent-up energy, to his immediate regret. Trying to keep him from bolting reminded him of walking their old neighbour's Tosa and he'd yanked the back of his shirt so many times that the spot below its collar was permanently distended.

Sousuke watched the team racing through the lanes, leg joggling. "You know... When everyone leaves, you and me will have the pool to ourselves. The nurse never has to know."

"Tempting, but no. The sooner you take care of yourself, the sooner you can get back in the water. Alright?" Rin nudged him in the bum. "You're in charge while I bring this in. Try to keep the casualties low."

"That sounds like something a Vice-Captain should do. Go bug him."

"Didn't I tell you? You are my VC. You always have been."

—

Rin dropped into his chair, tired and hungry and hating that he was expected to keep the libidos of a bunch of teenagers in check. He'd hauled the bags to the office like a perverted Santa Claus spreading mirth and joy to filthy girl-starved boys, artfully dodged the questions of the other club leaders as they awaited judgment, and kowtowed the best he could to appease the principal before he was allowed to crawl back to the dorms. He understood why salarymen drank now. Sinking into the backrest, he kicked off his slippers and downed his lukewarm protein shake to dull the hunger pains. Twenty minutes til dinner and then he could subdue the urge to strangle his teammates.

Sousuke set his book aside. "How'd he react?"

"About how you'd expect. Got yelled at for half an hour about needing to keep our swimmers in line with school values like it was my fault that they had that crap, then kissed ass for another half hour to assure him that he didn't need to ban us from all our meets for the next three months. But hey, it worked. Everybody gets to keep swimming for now. You're welcome. Anyone die while I was gone?"

"The Koreans dropped a nuke on the pool. Most of the team was killed on impact, the rest of us will succumb to radiation poisoning. I've already started shitting blood."

"As long as there are enough people left to swim the relay, I don't care." He didn't think mutating into fishmen violated competition regulations. "You got any fancy stationary I can borrow? Five pieces should be enough."

Sousuke slid open his top drawer and rifled through a heap of pens and papers. "He wanted a formal apology in quintuplet?"

"One's for him, the others are for the guys whose careers I ruined today."

Sousuke froze. Rin guessed someone must have clued him in on what had happened while he was searching the lockers. Funny how fast word spread when you didn't want it to.

"Ah, that." His jaw tensed for an instant, teeth gridlocked as he resumed searching slower than before. "You know that's not your fault, right?"

"I didn't have to do the bag check how Coach wanted me to. I could've figured out another way to do it. I didn't think that they... I didn't think. I could've looked the other way and I didn't." Rin threaded his hands through his hair, squeezed the back of his neck. "It's only a matter of time before word gets around. It's not a question of 'if' they're gonna get bullied, it's 'how much?'"

"The guys here are nice for the most part. Nicer than the ones in Tokyo, anyway. And if something does come up, it's not like they can't handle it. They're tough."

"Even mountains wear down into dust eventually. And people..." He thought about leaving it there. It would be easier to not open those doors. "People are a lot more fragile than mountains."

He looked at the smooth dark wood of his desk and saw faces in the grain. Barnaby Lauterstein. Alex MacAvoy. Edwin Crosby. He scratched an invisible X over the whorl that looked like Edwin, then the other two. Go away. Go away. He didn't want to remember. He pressed his hand over their leering faces and counted to four. When he moved it again, they were gone.

Elbow deep in the drawer and nowhere closer to finding the paper than he had been when he started, Sousuke said, "I'll keep an eye out for them. Last thing I need is you crying yourself to sleep over something stupid the rest of the semester."

"I'm not gonna—the fuck're you smirking at?"

"Nothing," Sousuke said, content to keep his amusement to himself.

That's not a 'nothing' face." Rin picked up his skateboard and prodded Sousuke with it until he relented.

"I think it's funny that you can call me fag all the livelong day, then turn around and play nice with real gays. Makes me wonder."

"They didn't try to molest me in the shower, you colossal faggot."

"You were doing plenty of molesting yourself."

"I kept everything above the belt. Perfectly straight."

"Telling me to suck spit off your dick is very straight, I agree." Sousuke flicked the stationery onto Rin's desk and reburied himself in his book.

After the final letter was signed and sealed, Rin sat back and stared at the wall, listening to the muffled noises of their neighbours. The quiet in their room was an uneasy one, a sharp departure from the usual calm. The sound of Sousuke's mechanical pencil idly scrawling notes scraped at the innards of Rin's head like metal on metal. Now that he thought about it, Sousuke hadn't told him a single thing about his life in Tokyo aside from getting scouted. It hadn't bothered him before since that was typical for Sousuke and it wasn't as if he'd been chomping at the bit to talk about Sydney either. If it was important, it would come up in due time. That was how it'd always worked between them, no need to change it now.

Sousuke was Sousuke, no matter what. He was the quiet kid who he'd spent weeks hounding after in elementary school to get one solid sentence out of him— _"Your shoe's untied, Matsuoka."_ He was the guy with an inexplicable taste in horror movies who never acted scared, but was the first to jump on the chance to have a sleepover after a marathon. The guy who made the tastiest okonomiyaki outside of Osaka. The guy he fought for the last ice pop. The guy he dreamed of having by his side at the Olympics. His best friend. Nothing could change that.

Sousuke was Sousuke and Sousuke was a lot of things, but gay wasn't one of them.

"I'd be okay with it if you were," he said, the lie pill-bitter in his mouth. "Y'know."

Sousuke didn't bother raising his head. "Try not to beat yourself up thinking you hurt me by calling me something I'm not. I was messing around and it went too far."

"Yeah. Me too." The silence that followed rooted in his chest, winding through his ribs and around his lungs until the urge to speak was strangled free. "So what's with the books? You pick up a literary streak while I was gone?"

"Well, when you're banned from doing everything but sleeping, you have to find ways to kill time. I can only jerk off so many times in a day." He flashed the cover of _The Big Encyclopedia of Japanese Yokai._ "I'm trying to figure out what's been going on the past couple days."

"Anything interesting?"

"How much do you know about _yokai_?"

"I watched some _Gegege no Kitaro_ when I was a kid, but that's about it."

"Let's put it this way." Sousuke fetched a fresh sheet of paper, drew a circle, then wrote 'yokai' in the middle. "This covers everything from creatures like kappa and oni to the spirits of humans, plants, animals, and anything else you can think of. From there you can break it down into more specific classes. You have _yurei_ , which are the spirits of dead humans, _henge_ , which are shapeshifters like foxes and tanuki, _kaiju_ , monsters, and _choshizen_ , which are weird, unexplained phenomena. Then you can break it down further within those groups, which brings us to _tsukumogami_ , which are the spirits of inanimate objects."

He wrote 'tsukumogami' in box he'd drawn for henge and drew a double circle around it.

"I think this is our culprit, but there's one thing stumping me. Tsukumogami are supposed to be items that gain sentience after turning a hundred and I don't know about you, but I don't think the vending machine that kicked your ass yesterday is from the Meiji era. I started thinking that maybe they're yurei possessing objects, but those prefer to come out during a specific time at night. Under normal logic that would rule them out because you've always been attacked in the day, but yokai hate logic, so they come out in the day sometimes." Sousuke added a few question marks to the yurei box.

"So you don't know what they are or how to stop them and I'm going to get murdered by a bunch of psychotic urinals."

"They could be some type of modern yokai or the historians might've screwed up and tsukumogami don't have to be a hundred to start being active. Most of the sources I've found can't agree on anything. Let's err on the side of caution and assume that everything in the school can come alive and kill you without warning."

"Great. Fantastic. I love it." Rin slumped across his desk. "There's nothing we can do? How'd you get the bins to stop?"

"There was this..." He made a vague gesture. "...power flowing through me. I wanted them to leave and they did."

"You saying you're an exorcist now?"

"Dunno. Maybe."

"Then you're in charge of exorcising my ghosts. Name your price."

"Let me think about it."

He resigned himself to another five year wait for an answer.

—

The clock clicked to 2:00 and Rin was beginning to think he'd be better off forgetting about anything that resembled good sleep. Most nights he was tired enough to pass out shortly after hitting the sheets, but tonight reminded him of the rough times in Sydney, dozing in brief intervals, waking to stare at nothing until the burning of his eyelids overwhelmed him and he drifted back to sleep, each cycle leaving him more drained than the last. Every minute that ticked by intensified the dreadhurt knotting his innards. Unlike back then, he couldn't afford to not be in peak condition. He had long lost track of how much he'd griefed his teammates about the importance of proper rest and the last thing he needed was to be seen as a hypocrite.

As he closed his eyes, deadset on getting at least a couple hours sleep, a soft, fleshy thud arose from the balcony. He rolled over and looked towards the source. Oblong shapes hovered at the door. He was unable to make out what kind of creatures they were, no matter how much he squinted. It was too late to be a bird and he didn't think there were bats around these parts.

Only when the moonlight shifted did he see their true form.

Dildos. Giant veiny horse dildos.

They sprayed white slime over the glass, writing 'thief' followed by 'punishment.' The knocking grew more insistent, shaking the pane. Disregarding the existence of unimportant things like ladders, he grabbed the top bunk rail and hauled himself up, crashlanding onto Sousuke in a tangle of limbs and equine-inspired terror.

Rin shook him, shouting, "It's happening! Wake up, it's happening again!"

Sousuke woke with a grunting snort, head whipping about in confusion as his foggy brain tried to parse the situation, his arms flailing every which way as he shouted incoherently at his assailant.

Rin covered his mouth and shushed him with his best cat-petting voice. "Don't scream. No screaming, okay? You're gonna wake the neighbours."

He held him down in hopes of wearing him out so they could have a rational talk about haunted sex toys, but Sousuke kept thrashing like a wounded bear and hollering just as loud. At that point Rin ran out of ideas and let him go, figuring he would wake up enough to realize what was going on. Instead Sousuke cocked his fist and next thing he knew, stars were bursting across his vision. He reeled backwards, getting only a second to wonder if his jaw was broken before Sousuke pounced atop him and began mercilessly bashing him over the head with his pillow.

"Sousuke! Sousuke! Stop! It's me!"

"Izzwha?" Sousuke lifted the pillow and blinked hard, sweeping the hazy webs of sleep from his mind. "Rin? What're you doing?"

"I should be the one asking you that, idiot!" Rin shoved him into the mattress and checked himself for blood. "Fuck's sake, who'd you think it was?"

"A burglar."

"What kind of burglar comes out in the middle of nowhere to rob a bunch of high schoolers? In Iwatobi, of all places. You know we only have a police department out of politeness." Rin reached for Sousuke's cheek, swearing he saw a glimmer of moisture. "Are you _crying_?"

Sousuke swatted the hand away. "No, I'm not you. What'd you want?"

"I'm being haunted again."

Sousuke finally noticed the knocking. He looked at the dildos, then at Rin, then laid down and pulled the blankets up to his neck. "You're own your own. G'night."

"No, not 'g'night!' Do something!"

"Why are you worried? They're not in here."

"Because I don't want to know what a bunch of ghost dildos plan to do to me for revenge!"

Sousuke, on the other hand, looked excessively entertained by the thought. "Can't be that bad. Who knows, you might enjoy it."

"I like the sanctity of my asshole, you big gay fuck."

"It shouldn't be hard to resolve the haunting. They probably want to be back with their owners."

"If they have time to be knocking on my window at two in the morning, they have time to find their owners. They're out for blood."

"We'll figure it out tomorrow. Make sure everything's locked before you go to bed."

His patience with Sousuke's nonchalance towards the situation had its limits. "I can't sleep with them watching me. What if they break in?"

"Then you're going to be mighty sore in the morning." Sousuke framed him through his fingers. "My camera's kinda crap, but I think I could turn a good profit on a porno starring you once you're famous. 'Dive deep into the dirty past of the Olympic champion! You thought he sizzled when he was winning medals for Japan? Wait until you see how much hotter he gets out of the water with ninety rock-solid minutes of intense ghost on teen action! He's taken on athletes from every other nation and come out on top, but can The Wonder from Down Under survive a gangbang of these epic proportions? Sweat! Tears! Creampies galore! _Tottori S.O.S –Shag Our Swimmers–_ coming soon to a theatre near you!"

"Get fucked."

"No, that's your job. I just hold the camera," Sousuke said with a smarmy grin.

Rin deeply resented the fact that he needed him intact for future hauntings. He'd like to see how funny Sousuke thought it was when he was the target of the spirits' rage.

"You gonna go to bed? I want to get back to the dream I was having."

"I was thinking..." Rin fiddled with the sheets, trying to figure the least embarrassing way to phrase his idea. "Maybe I could sleep up here? Strength in numbers, y'know."

"If it'll get you to shut up. Don't forget the locks."

Rin checked the locks and grabbed his pillow, feigning disinterest in the toys as he settled in the top bunk.

The last time they'd slept together was when they were eight and had watched _Tetsuo_ with Gou since Mum was out of the house and couldn't tell them not to. When GAME OVER flashed across the screen, the three of them huddled in the closet under a pile of coats, fingers fisted tight into Sousuke's shirt because he was the biggest and therefore the most capable of protecting them from the Metal Fetishist's nefarious plot to rust the world. Mum had yelled at them when she got home, but allowed Sousuke to stay the night as long as he promised to not bring any more scary movies over—a rule he ultimately circumvented by having the Matsuokas come over to his place instead. Sousuke remained the meat of the Matsuoka sandwich until bedtime, when Mum had informed Gou that young ladies weren't allowed to sleep in the same bed as young men unless they were getting married to them. Despite her tearful proclamations that she and Sousuke _were_ married because Rin had presided over a ceremony for them the week prior, she had been kicked out of Rin's room and Sousuke had been his shield alone.

He smiled, relishing the sturdiness of Sousuke's back against his. He tilted his shoulder to give him a nudge. Sousuke reciprocated and that was the last thing Rin remembered before falling into a dark, dreamless sleep.

—

Rin woke to the smell of an armpit. Sousuke's armpit, to be precise, which his face was firmly lodged in. It wasn't his ideal wake-up call, but it beat being buttfucked by haunted dildos. He lifted his head and cleared the musky stench of BO from his nostrils. Sousuke laid sprawled on his back, rivers running from his chainsaw snoring mouth, the hills and valleys of his body inviting exploration. Rin found his eye drawn to the dark sweat stains marking his armpits. The t-shirt was green, but years of lackadaisical care had rendered the pits stiff and yellowed. He hooked his finger into a sleeve and rolled it back over Sousuke's shoulder, exposing the raw flesh beneath. Crumbled bits of deodorant stuck in the budding forest of stubble, soaking up what they could of the thin veneer of sweat covering his body.

Entranced, Rin pressed his nose to the inexplicably fascinating pit and breathed. Bitter pungent notes tickled his nosebuds first, followed by a mellow sourness with a lingering hint of fermented powder. He'd always enjoyed the mild scent of fresh sweat when he was coming down from his exercise high, especially when it was accompanied by the thrill of overcoming a lifting plateau or cutting a few seconds off his 5k. Old sweat, on the other hand, repulsed the neatnik in him, ensuring that his gym clothes never saw the inside of a hamper unless he was drop-dead tired. His Australian teammates made him despise it more, their bodies assaulting him with overtones of Limburger cheese, vinegar, goon, and garlic covered with a healthy dose of Lynx. But this was different. Nice, even. Strong, but not overpowering, akin to his own body's odor. Smelled like hard work.

Again the wisp of powder enticed him, reeling him deeper into the labyrinthine aroma. Muddled under the top notes laid hints of freshness and summer, intermingled in a lovers' embrace that he wished he could wedge himself in for eternity. The strands were faint and with each breath they faded further into obscurity. He gave the pit a parting lick, tasting the salted earthen tang of musk and sweat underscored by a delicate creamy flavour. He didn't bother to think about why he'd done it. There were more important matters to focus on, starting with getting Sousuke out of bed.

He shook him softly. "Oi, wake up."

Sousuke mumbled a few incomprehensible words and tightened his grip on Rin, pinning him to his chest.

"Wake up, we have to get ready." Rin tried to get some leverage with his arm, but it was useless. He'd need a crowbar to free himself. "You're gonna miss breakfast."

"Breakfast?" Sousuke cracked an eye, his voice thick with sleep.

"Morning, sunshine. We gotta get going if we want to be ready in time to get the good stuff. You wanna eat, don't you?"

Sousuke's hand fumbled over Rin's face, squashing his nose and nearly poking his eye out. "Why are you here? Did we fuck? Is that why you're making breakfast? That's nice of you."

Sousuke was lucky he was a nice guy or else he'd be tempted to take advantage of his morning loopiness.

"Not even in your dreams. I slept over because of the ghosts, remember?"

"Oh. Right." Sousuke rolled onto his side, inching closer to Rin. "Five more minutes."

"Every time you say that, you sleep another hour. Get up," Rin said, gently slapping him on the cheek. Steady escalation seemed to run a lower risk of him getting his lights punched out. Sousuke shifted, grumbling, and Rin felt something press into his thigh. He flicked it for confirmation. "Nice woody. You have some nice dreams or are you just happy to see me?"

"A little of column A, a little of column B." His hand crept down Rin's side and patted his cock. "Glad I'm not the only one. Otherwise this might've been weird."

Rin couldn't fight the sudden surge of heat in his ears at the way Sousuke quirked his eyebrow. "I have to piss, it's got nothing to do with you."

"Nah, I get it. I'd do me too." Sousuke flexed his bicep and laid a trail of kisses across it. "I'm amazed I don't cream my pants every time I look in the mirror."

"Vain cunt." Rin pinched Sousuke's nose. "Enough joking, let's go."

"Just a few more minutes. 'm comfy."

"Don't blame me if all you get is rice." Rin pulled himself out of Sousuke's arms and was promptly dragged back down. His amusement bled out on the spot. "What now?"

"You're stealing the heat."

"Use a blanket, mongtard. They gave you one for a reason. Lemme go, I wanna take a shower." Rin crawled halfway out of Sousuke's grasp before being flattened against him again.

"You smell fine. Your mouth could stand a wash since you talk so much shit, but other than that it's alright."

"How would you know? Were you sniffing me in my sleep like some kinda pervert?"

"How could I not? Your manly musk is irresistible." Sousuke pulled his head in and took a whiff. "Smells like overcompensation and... Is that a hint of roo spunk? You weren't _that_ lonely in Australia, were you?"

"I'm gonna be a lot lonelier once I finish strangling you. You were the best roommate I ever had." Rin wriggled a hand free and wrapped it around Sousuke's neck.

"It's too early to kill each other. Wait until lunch." Sousuke clawed the hand from his throat and held him closer. "Why're you trying so hard to leave? Do you have intimacy issues? I can fix that."

"I have issues with clingy idiots with no sense of personal space. Do I look like a stuffed animal to you?"

Sousuke nodded, nose buried thick in Rin's hair. "Champ Champ..."

"I'm not Champ Champ! Do you still have that thing?"

"Mmhm. Couldn't take him to Tokitsu, so he's been waiting at home for me since I left. This is the closest I've gotten to having him back in ages."

"Didn't think you were the type to get sentimental over a toy."

"Says the king of sentimentality himself. I bet you've still got Chomp Chomp."

Guilt niggled at the recesses of Rin's mind. When he left for Sydney, he'd crammed Chomp Chomp in the closet and left him to rot with his childhood clothes, only to return and realize he'd outgrown them all. The clothes he'd thrown away, Chomp Chomp he kept out of indifference. He was harmless nostalgia bait that brought back a handful of fond memories, but he wouldn't cry if he was gone the next time he went home. Sousuke being so attached to his counterpart defied both expectation and the limits of Rin's imagination. Trying to visualize him as he was now—big, bulky, and half done developing the signature Yamazaki scowl—huddled up against a giant plush shark nearly gave him an aneurysm. He stopped before he inflicted any lasting damage.

Rin brought himself level with Sousuke and saw he was waiting for a sign.

"Five minutes is what you get and not a second more. For Champ Champ's memory."

The arm around Rin's waist tightened and the sweet pressure on their cocks intensified. He had to piss something fierce, but fuck, it felt good in the way only a woody could. He swept his hand over Sousuke's chest and rested it on his heart. It quickened, dancing beneath his fingertips faster than he could count, then evened out to a steady thud. Rin tucked his chin into the crook of Sousuke's shoulder and rubbed his nape, thumbing the clean cut of his hairline. Traces of swimmer's shampoo persisted in the air around him even though he hadn't swam in days, since according to him, buying two types of shampoo was a waste of time and money. _'I don't need to be pretty, I need something that works,'_ was how Rin recalled him putting it. One of the luxuries of short hair was not having to give a fuck, he supposed. The only time he'd ever seen Sousuke have a bad hair day was when Gou stuck gum in it and his old man buzzed the whole lot off because he couldn't be bothered to ice it out. Sousuke had spent the next month and a half looking like a dirty tennis ball, much to Rin's amusement.

Outside the spring winds picked up, howling through the campus greenery, shuddering their branches along the sides of the dorm. Goosebumps prickled up Rin's arms, remembering the miserable winter and how it had moseyed halfway into March before easing up enough for him to stop carrying gloves around campus. He hadn't always been weak to the cold, but four years in the sweltering humidity of Sydney made him susceptible to anything short of barbeque and beach weather. The wind blasted once more, sending the trees into convulsions and shivers rippling through him, but he didn't dare speak what his body admitted.

Again the wind roared.

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, Sousuke pulled the blanket up to their necks, sealing in the heat of their bodies. Rin became hyperaware of the intoxicating warmth emanating from Sousuke and drank it deep, burrowing ivylike into every crevice he could take root in, nuzzling his neck and soaking in the scent of flesh and faded shampoo. Unconsciously he rolled his hips against his bedmate's in molasses-slow waves to gain the spark of friction that elevated the moment from good to sublime. Sousuke's heart pounded louder in his palm.

Not to be outdone, Sousuke spidered his hands lower, rubbing lax circles on Rin's glutes as his own hips rolled in kind, doubling the rapturous pressure on their cocks. Rin slid the hand around Sousuke's nape to the back of his sweats with the intent of diving beneath its waistband and giving him a quick pinch, but botched the execution and ended up with his hand sandwiched snugly in Sousuke's asscrack. The sharp inhale in his ear startled him and, thinking he had crossed a boundary, started to pull out. Sousuke clenched his glutes, trapping the hand in place as he gave him an approving squeeze on the bum and rocked harder against him. It was just as well, since the crevasse was delightfully damp and lined with tiny hairs that tickled his hand with each stroke. He would have to compliment Sousuke on his toasty buns later.

Five minutes blurred into five thousand and Rin let his wandering mind study where the blood ran hottest along their parallel bonework until he surrendered rational thought for pure feeling, melting down their beings and blending into a hazy glow. "They" were no more. All that remained was their hands, their cocks, their warmth.

This was surely their own piece of heaven.

Blaring alarms broke their trance and Rin fumbled for his phone to silence the hateful noise, irate that he had bothered to set one in the first place. When he moved to leave, Sousuke didn't fight it. He lingered at the limits of Sousuke's gravitational well, debating whether to climb out and go about his day as usual or to permit himself to be drawn back in, never to resurface. When he went to bed last night he thought today would be fine albeit busy, but now it sounded shit compared to hugging it out for a few hours, sneaking off to the conbini for a late lunch, and watching kaiju movies with the volume down low so the RA didn't catch them. He sensed Sousuke was on the same page. They would have to do this again on a day they weren't so busy. Nothing wrong with a friendly cuddle between a couple guys.

It didn't mean anything. Just felt nice.

He pushed away the blanket and sat up, twisting a delicious series of cracks from his spine. He had to go. Important things to do, important people to see. But the promise of strong arms and blanket cocoons was so inviting. His dick pulsed in agreement. He squeezed it with a long sigh, then leaned over to flick Sousuke's hardon again.

"Come on, for real this time."

Sousuke arched his back as he yawned, exposing his taut abs. He scratched his belly and slid his hand down to cup his wood, eyes drifting shut as he sank into the mattress. "Nah. I feel a headache coming on. See you at practice."

"See you then."

Rin gathered his things and lobbed the bottle of paracetamol on Sousuke's desk into his bunk. He skipped trying to battle his hardon at the toilet and headed for the showers. As the first stubborn squirts flowed into an unbroken stream, he clasped the hand that had been buried in Sousuke's trunks over his nose. Predictably, it smelled like sweaty ass.

He didn't mind it as much as he should've.

—

Rin loathed waiting. Waiting for something that he knew ended in embarrassment for him he despised even more, like going for his physical and knowing that no matter how cordial the doctor was, he had to grab his balls at some point. Rewind a quarter hour, back to his dorm room. He'd gone to check on Sousuke to make sure his brains hadn't started spontaneously oozing out of his head and that he wasn't breaking his promise to take it easy. He brought him lunch—ginger pork, shredded cabbage, and bamboo shoot rice—paid for with his own money. He'd even given him a quick shoulder massage. Things that a good captain would do. And for once, it seemed like Sousuke appreciated it. Along with his many thanks, he'd given him an _omamori_ he'd made out of an old towel to help fend off spirits. Good feelings were had and he'd left the room confident that he could take on whatever came his way, corporeal or otherwise.

And then, on his way back to the cafeteria, he ran into a spirit. No problem, he thought as he brandished the omamori. He was prepared this time. There was one minor problem.

The charm didn't fucking work.

To Sousuke's credit, a tersely worded text that his omamori wasn't quite what it was cracked up to be was enough to have him come running, but even then it was a five minute jog between the dorms and the bathroom Rin barricaded himself in, which was five minutes too long. Meeting him halfway wasn't an option, so he sat there, stripped down to his boxers and undershirt, alone with his thoughts.

When the door creaked open and he heard Sousuke call his name, he didn't know whether to kiss him for showing up or kick his ass for taking so long. He stuck his hand out of the stall, beckoning. The closer his footsteps drew, the worse of an idea it seemed. Four steps. He should send him back to their room. Three steps. He could figure this out on his own. Two steps. He was never going to live this down. Last step.

Sousuke took one look at him and with an infuriating smirk said, "I like this already."

Rin kicked him in the shin, scowling.

"What happened to your face?"

He was referring, of course, to the red marks populating his cheeks. Rin could tell him. He could deliver a flawless play by play of the attack and explain that after going out of his way to give him the royal treatment, he'd run to the bathroom to drop some kids at the pool and as he'd wiped off, he'd felt something snake around his ankle. Naturally he'd snapped into full Australia mode and assumed the worst, that he was going to cark it in a bathroom stall of all the shitty places. Once the initial spark of surprise subsided, he'd steeled his nerves and looked down at the untold horror that crept up his leg.

Baby-blue anal beads the size of ping pong balls slithered around his thigh on their merry way to his asshole. He'd jumped out of his skin, tripped on his slacks, and collided with the wall, netting him the first bunch of marks. The rest had come when he'd grabbed the string that joined the beads together. They'd constricted around his arm, reared back, and drove his fist into his face. While he was busy trying to stop himself from being a self-flagellating speedbag, more toys had sprung out from the neighbouring stalls and descended on him in a blinding flurry of leather and rubber. He'd succumbed to the assault and shot Sousuke a text, bringing them back to the present.

Rin could tell him that.

If only there wasn't a giant rubber ball gag crammed in his mouth.

He glowered at Sousuke until he invited himself into the cramped stall and locked the door behind them. Rin turned, holding his hair to expose the gag's buckle. Nothing about it seemed out of sorts to Sousuke, so he couldn't figure out why Rin had called him until he touched the leather. Electricity jolted up his arm, making his heart skip a few painful beats. Rin twisted on the spot with a muffled yell, his spasming shoulders hunched as he clutched Sousuke's shirt, transferring the shock through the rest of his body. Sousuke released the buckle and shoved Rin away, stomping and swearing as the buzzing subsided.

"Why didn't you tell me it would do that?"

Rin pointed to the gag with a huff.

"You could've written a note," Sousuke said, massaging his trembling arms. "We're gonna have to do it in one go. Bear with me."

They decided the best way to avoid another accident was to have Rin lay prone while Sousuke straddled him, careful to not make direct contact. Sousuke grabbed the buckle and the energy raced through his arm again, muscles shaking as he fumbled with the prong. He wrenched the belt loose and the shocks stopped as abruptly as they'd begun. Rin spat the gag out and swiped his arm across his mouth.

"So is that it or do you have another surprise for me?" Sousuke asked as he helped Rin to his feet.

"You have to promise me you're not going to laugh."

"I promise."

"I'm serious. Don't laugh." Rin dropped his skivies, exposing the flared base of a buttplug.

Sousuke laughed.

"It's not funny! It won't budge!" Crammed deep past the plug were the anal beads, resulting in a distinctly unpleasant fullness that wouldn't abate. "And there's another thing in there that you're gonna have to get."

"Anything else?"

Cheeks burning hotter than lava, Rin turned, revealing a mass of black plastic encapsulating his cock. "I don't know how to get it off. I think it needs a key."

It took Sousuke a couple minutes to finish his new laughing fit. "They caged the beast? That's awful. We can't have that. But first things first."

He pointed at the wall and Rin leaned against it, bracing himself on his forearms. He felt like one of those girls you'd see in news reports about Kabukicho with their faces plastered in front of health clubs or sudsing up old men by the dozens in soaplands, pounds of flesh begging to be carved up and sold to the highest bidder.

"Take a deep breath and relax. We're gonna take it nice and easy." Sousuke stroked the nubs of Rin's spine with his knuckles. "Stick your butt out a little more. Arch it. Yeah, like that."

The caress that followed, drawing a lopsided teardrop from his tailbone to the base of his buttock and back again, sent anxiety pinprickling up his spine. _Danger! Danger!_ flashed through his mind in searing yellow and red, screaming at him to run, run and hide somewhere he could never be found.

"Part of me thinks this isn't necessary." Rin tucked his bum in, straightening to a more dignified stance.

"It is absolutely necessary."

Leaden hands reshaped him into the previous pose, ass out and up, primed for fucking. Rin ground his teeth, glad that the cage kept his cock tucked safely out of reach. Heaven only knew what would happen if it had been hanging free. He shuddered at the thought.

"I really don't think it is." Rin fixed his pose again, tucking his tail tighter.

Unamused with the coy play, Sousuke seized Rin by the hips and yanked him off his feet. Rin scrambled to maintain balance, sweaty palms squealing against the partition as the alarms rose to a deafening blare. They slung around twice their own weight in the gym with ease, so he knew full well that they could lift each other, but neither of them had actually tried it. His feet hung half a dozen centimetres from the tile, small and useless beneath him. Nausea swelled thick in his stomach as he strained his legs downward, struggling to ground himself, to drown out the rising memory with an internal scream.

She came into his mind with earthshaking feet, that Amazon from the softball team who had ambushed him outside of the natatorium in middle school and carried him to her club like a fucking toddler. _Get a load of this Jap kid Bazza was going on about._ Laughter rang in his ears, layered over his garbled English as he tried to laugh along with them because for all he knew, it was an Australian thing. _Dead ringer for a little girl, isn't he?_ He was passed around from one huge girl to another, their fingers digging into his ribs— _you're all skin and bones, what kind of athlete are you?_ —pushing his hands on their breasts— _bet shorty's never grabbed one of these_ —and he couldn't do anything. You didn't hurt girls, no matter what. They shoved him around for ten, fifteen minutes before getting bored and dropping him to talk about TV.

He'd run straight home, locked himself in his room, and cried the whole night.

When he woke the next morning, cheek crusted to the pillow with salt, he was determined to never be small again. He'd scraped together a painstakingly researched supplement stack, ate himself sick every day, and spent increasingly huge amounts of time in the gym and none of it mattered. Muscle meant nothing if you were still short.

Coming back to Japan had been a relief. He hadn't minded that a few of his old friends had shot up like trees because as far as anyone here was concerned, he had too. But he wasn't tall. He never would be. He would never have people look up to him the way they did to Seijuurou or Makoto. Sousuke would never think about doing this if they stood eye-to-eye.

"You gonna relax and let me do the job you called me to do?" Sousuke asked, hoisting him higher.

Rin nodded, afraid his voice would crack and reveal everything if he spoke. Sousuke put him down and Rin rejoiced at the simple pleasure of having earth beneath him. Once they were done with this nonsense and Sousuke thought he was safe, Rin would see just how much he liked getting tossed around like a ragdoll.

Unaware of Rin's plotting, Sousuke pulled on the plug. It remained rooted in place.

"It's stuck." He sounded baffled, as if he imagined anything involving the spirits would be simple.

"Yeah, great, we've established that. You're supposed to be getting it unstuck."

"Maybe if you would relax a little we wouldn't be having this problem."

"Tell me to relax one more time. Tell me to relax one more time and see what happens."

"You sound stressed. You should..." Sousuke leaned close enough to brush Rin's ear with his lips. "Relax."

 _"I'll kick you from arsehole to breakfast time! I am not in the bloody mood for this!"_ Rin drove his heel into Sousuke's toes with a satisfying thump.

"Sorry, I don't speak English."

"You're not gonna speak anything when I'm done knocking your teeth out!"

"I'm okay with that as long as you take responsibility and chew my food for me."

"Shut up and pull it out already!"

Sousuke studied the plug, tugging it a few more times to see if it would yield. He got nothing but a murderous glare from Rin.

Figuring that spirit could only be met with spirit, he called on the power that had welled within him twice before and thin webs of energy gradually coated his fingers. It looked nothing like when he merged with the hare, the strands dim, wavering fragments that drifted out of existence when they strayed too far from their source. He tensed his hand, trying to fill in the gaps, but the energy guttered and sank back into his pores. At this rate, Rin would have to spend the rest of the day stuffed fuller than a pensioner's piggybank and as much as the thought amused him, he didn't want to get nagged at for however long it took to fix. He recalled that one of the books he'd checked out had given an overview of spiritual training techniques and reckoned he might as well give it a shot.

He laid his right hand in his left, joining his thumbs and forefingers into circles, then closed his eyes and let the world fade away. Each breath brought a new sound, first picking up the beat of his heart, then the muffled rise and fall as people passed the bathroom, the whoosh of water running through the pipes, the monotone hum of the incandescent lights, and the soft, sharp inhale Rin took every time the door opened. His monkey mind clutched onto them all so they could be identified and categorized to satisfy his base nature. He continued redirecting his mind to his center until the noises were no longer a distraction and he could delve to the source of the energy, bundled near the base of his spine in an onion-shaped jewel. Ignoring Rin's incessant questions, he stroked the core brighter with a mantra murmured under his breath, the words kindling to its luminous glow. When he opened his eyes once more, the light surrounding his hands had condensed into a cohesive form. He steadied his hand on the plug.

"I'm going to pull on a count of three. Ready?"

"Hurry up and do it!"

"One." Sousuke tore the plug out, sending a wave of fire ripping through Rin's guts.

"Sonuvabitch, you said three!"

"You're the one who told me to hurry."

"That doesn't mean you can—"

Sousuke picked up the gag, stuffed it back into Rin's mouth, and cinched it tight. "You're gonna get a teacher called on us if you don't quit screaming."

"Mmff mff mmmmmph mph hmmmphmmph mfffhhmphh?!" Rin shouted, waves of slobber bubbling down his chin.

"See what I mean? Better already."

Insult upon insult piled atop the humiliation molehill and Rin was loath to think of how high the builder's sights were set. When Sousuke wanted to be an asshole, he could hit the things that pissed Rin off with scientific precision and even when he didn't, he had a way of casually nailing sore spots that made them hurt all the more. Normally he could tell him to eat a bag of dicks or dig into one of his bugbears in return, but here he had nothing. He was stuck Playgirl posing, a prisoner in his head unable to do something as simple as not drooling like a retarded baby. He heard the hock of spit and felt the pressure of wet fingers against his anus. They went in easy, walking a burning path up his shitter until they were buried to the knuckle—and then some. The sensation of fullness was enhanced by the gutbusting toys and he forced himself to smother the unease broiling in his chest. _Wouldn't be much of a step up from fingers to cock_ , the voice at the back of his subconscious whispered. He drowned it out with the sound of The Vandals, silently mouthing the lyrics to "Manimal" while trying to ignore the stomach-twisting waggling in his asshole.

After a few minutes of fruitless scraping, Sousuke clipped a foreign object. He ran his fingertip over it, building the vague mental shape of a ring. "I found it, but it's jammed in there too far for me to reach. You're gonna have to push it where I can grab it. Pretend you're a bird laying eggs or something."

Though he found the suggestion both unhelpful and disgusting, Rin clenched his jaw until his jugulars bulged from the strain, spit squelching around the gag as he pushed. The movement was mind-numbing in its slowness, but it moved and that was more than he'd hoped for. Sousuke rubbed his abdomen in encouragement, missing the ring by hairs with each push, finger jabbing into the soft intestine and making sourness spike in Rin's throat. Six misses later, Sousuke finally scored and began dragging the beads out. The sensation of the spheres sliding through Rin's bowels granted him an almost sexual relief and he let out a shivering sigh as the string approached the exit. Freedom at last. There was a sickening _splorch_ as the first bead popped out, accompanied by a spatter of unidentifiable wetness. He sincerely hoped it wasn't what he thought it was.

And then, it stopped.

He felt Sousuke pull half the second bead out, then slacken the line to let his asshole gobble it back up. Again and again he did it, keeping him in limbo. The second bead popped free and the joy that surged within him as his asshole snapped shut around the line was dampened by the third bead getting trapped the same way.

"Sorry, having some technical difficulties. They're really not wanting to come out."

Sousuke started an unintelligible chant under his breath as Rin gnashed his teeth against the gag, gouging the slick rubber. He sounded sincere, but if he'd gotten the first bead out without a problem, surely the rest were no more difficult. The more frustrated Rin got, the more he gnashed and the more he gnashed, the more spit he created. It pooled in his lower lip to the brink of overflow and he tilted his head back, letting the accumulated drool roll down his throat. He breathed, thinking he was in the clear, and sucked everything into the wrong pipe. Fire striped his lungs as he coughed, splattering his chin with spit while Sousuke pulled out the third bead without hesitation.

Eyes watering, Rin reached between his legs and grabbed the beads for himself, his fingers slipping on the silicone until he grabbed hold of the joining rope. He yanked, catapulting himself into a world of pain, whimpering into the gag and sending a fresh sluice of spit curling over his lips. He kept jerking on the line, sick of feeling as if he was holding a monstrous shit that had already crowned. Fuck the pain, he was getting it out one way or another. Sousuke held his wrist, telling him that he was going to hurt himself, but he didn't care anymore. He would turn himself inside-out if it meant getting rid of the invader.

"It won't be much longer, I promise." Sousuke guided Rin's hand back to the wall and rested his chin on his shoulder. "Breathe with me."

Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Repeat. Sousuke's breath was hot in his ear, sending his hair fluttering across his nose.

"That's good. Keep breathing. I'm gonna count down from three, for real this time. When I say relax, I want you to release all the tension in your muscles at once. Got it?"

Rin gave him a tentative nod.

"Three. Two. One. Relax."

His sphincter collapsed in exhaustion and the rest of the beads came out in a single smooth tug.

"Was that everything or is there something else I need to get?" Sousuke's middle finger pressed against Rin's loosened asshole, prepared to probe for further intrusions. Once Rin affirmed that was everything, he said, "I'm gonna wash my hands. You probably should too."

Sousuke had clenched his hands so Rin couldn't see it, but one look at the beads and his own hands told him everything he needed to know. The pre-attack dump hadn't cleaned out the downstairs as well as he'd thought. He wanted nothing more than to curl up in on himself and die a spider's death, swept into the corner and forgotten in the dust. Sousuke hurried to the sinks, turned the spigot with his elbow, and slammed his wrist against the soap pump until his hands were overflowing. He washed them lightning fast, scouring under his nails and in every crevice until they were fit for surgery, then stood watch at the door as Rin cleaned up.

"If it makes you feel any better, I've had worse on me," Sousuke offered.

Knowing that there was something worse than poohands didn't make Rin feel better. Finding the keys to the chastity cage atop the soap dispenser did. He unlocked the cage and it slid off with a tug, separating into four pieces. No muss, no fuss. Rin pocketed them after he redressed, planning to anonymously return them to the principal later. He tapped the leather strap bisecting his cheek and Sousuke followed him back into the stall to remove the gag. Pressing his handkerchief to the bottom of Rin's chin, Sousuke unbuckled the gag and caught the outpouring of spit that chased the ball. Moving with terrifying gentleness, he mopped up the drool caked to his face, picking away the strands of hair stuck in it. Rin licked his wet, swollen lips, conspicuously clearing his throat as Sousuke's hands fell away. Ghosts of his touch remained embedded in his nerves, crawling from cell to cell. He made a mental note to wash his face until they let him be.

"You know you could've taken this off a while ago, right?" Sousuke dropped the gag, letting it bounce into one of the adjacent stalls. "I deactivated it the first time, it wasn't going to shock you again."

"You could've said something!" Rin sputtered, shoving him into the door. "None of this would've happened if your stupid omamori worked like you said it would."

"I don't know what the problem was. It should've been fine." Sousuke picked the charm up from the ground and sucked in a pained breath at the sight of it. "I wrote the wrong kanji. My bad."

Rin pulled the bag out of his hand and read the clumsily embroidered characters. Instead of 'ward away evil spirits' was 'ward away calendar.' He pelted it into the toilet and stomped on the flush lever, unsure if he was angrier at Sousuke for miswriting it or at himself for not noticing. "I spent four years barely using Japanese and I don't make fuckups like that! Get it together!"

"Like I said, my bad. Won't happen again."

"I go out of my way to do something nice for you and you screw me," Rin grumbled, checking his phone. Six minutes until next period. "I don't even have time to get my own lunch now."

Sousuke pulled a SoyJoy out of his pocket, tossed it at Rin, and headed for the door. "I'll bring you something else to eat before practice."

"You're an illiterate asshole and I hate you," Rin called after him as he unwrapped the bar and bit into it. Hawthorn and brown sugar filled his mouth, making his nostrils flare in disgust. Sousuke's tastes made no sense. He forced himself to choke the whole thing down anyway.

As he gathered his things to head to class, he noticed that he'd popped his second chubby of the day. No particular reason he could think of aside from the old hormones flaring up and having nowhere to go.

"The fuck are you looking at?" he growled at his bulge.

It remained dickishly silent.

—

The next nine hours were a conga line of minor disasters starting with an unannounced test in Classical Japanese and ending with him and the entire student body worshipping every available toilet, sink, and bin on campus due to a batch of dodgy shellfish, but somehow the thing that pissed him off most were the obnoxious _'must be nice to have a girlfriend'_ comments from his classmates when Sousuke showed up with his promised bento during classroom cleaning because they led into jokes about 'Sex God Matsuoka' and a conversation that irritated him more every time he thought about it.

 _"You don't get jealous about him seducing all those bins, Yamazaki?"_ and instead of saying something sensible, Sousuke said, _"Nah, his heart swims free in the day, but it's me he comes back to at night."_

Everyone had laughed and he'd had to fake laugh even though he wanted to suplex Sousuke through the window. Vengeance would be swift and unmerciful—once he got some shut-eye. He heaved his pillow into Sousuke's bunk and climbed after it, ready for a hard sleep.

Unprepared for the intrusion, Sousuke furrowed his brow at Rin as he cleared the top rail. "Another sleepover?"

"I don't see why you're complaining when I'm doing you a favour. Someone's gotta protect you from all those spooky burglars." Rin flopped down and rested his chin on Sousuke's chest, smirking up at him from between his pecs. "S'alright, bud. Your secret's safe with me. The next time we have a day off we can go home and get Champ Champ, but for now I'll be a good pal and fill in for him."

"How thoughtful."

"You have special needs. They come first."

"You're afraid the dildos will come back."

"Terrified," Rin admitted. "Did you see the size of them? I'd have to wear diapers for the rest of my life if they got me. Minami says he can take more than one at a time, but I think he's full of shit."

"Not shit, horsedicks. He replaced his internal organs with them."

"Wasn't that the plot to one of your dad's movies?"

"Wouldn't doubt it." Sousuke flicked through his phone for a while, waiting for Rin to buzz off. When he didn't, he asked, "You're really staying here?"

"I don't want to, but it's the fastest way to get you if something happens."

"I'm not going to let you sleep up here the entire year."

"You should've banished them by then. That's what I'm paying you for," Rin muttered into Sousuke's shirt, taking in the faint scent of his soap.

"You never paid me."

"You won't tell me what you want!"

Sousuke mulled it over and settled on, "Buy all my meals for a day. As long as I'm fed, your ass is in good hands."

"Consider it done. Try not to fuck up this time."

Rin rolled to the unoccupied bit of the bunk and began planning out the next day. Get the results for the contraband tally, consult with the treasurer so they could start planning the club trip, check up on Gou to make sure she hadn't been seduced by a random jackass, figure out how to dispose of bodies in case she had, order a new tub of protein powder and check his supplement stocks, follow up on Coach's supply request, review Midorijima and Satoshima's training menus, run a 10k (he couldn't skip it or downgrade it this time, that was the beginning of a bad habit), try to get ahead on homework, set up the next joint practice with Iwatobi and review his caloric intake for the week and coordinate a study session with Momo since his grades had slipped and he was in danger of being put on club suspension and he needed one of his better backstrokers to not be out of the running for regionals placement and—and—

Every time he thought of something he needed to do, another two tasks popped up until was torchless against his Hydrian schedule. Seijuurou had alleged he'd never needed a Vice Captain and Rin had never wanted to call someone a liar so badly before. He considered making Sousuke his VC for real and nixed the idea immediately. Sure, he had promise as a leader. The underclassmen respected him and he was good at correcting form and giving meaningful guidance even if he tended to be reluctant to do so, but Sousuke returned to Iwatobi to enjoy his last year before running off to his uni of choice. Asking him to keep an eye on the team for a bit wasn't the same as asking him to take on extra burdens that weren't strictly club related—even if they did involve club members. His cutesy quip the day before was nothing more than that.

He was going to have to pull it together and keep doing what he had been so far and take care of it himself, one step at a time.

A gust of air tickled his nape as an arm draped around his waist. He craned his head back to find Sousuke curled up against him.

"What are you doing?" he asked, shrugging the arm off.

Sousuke dropped it right back where it'd been. "You said you'd fill in for Champ Champ."

"I didn't mean that, jackass. We're not sleeping like this."

"Champ Champ never argued with me. You're a terrible replacement, I want my money back."

"I'm the best replacement, I just don't want to end up trapped again."

"You didn't have a problem with it this morning. I don't see what the difference is."

"The difference is that I'm awake enough to tell you that I don't want to be your hugpillow and you're awake enough to listen."

"My bunk, my rules. If you don't like them, you can get out and fight the dildos yourself." Sousuke started dragging Rin's pillow out from beneath him.

Rin regretted that he valued his anal integrity more than avoiding minor discomfort. "I'll let you do it for fifteen minutes if it helps you unwind, but you can't fall asleep and you have to go back to your side when we're done."

"Twenty."

"Fine, don't breathe on my neck. It's gross."

Sousuke apparently took that to mean he should strangle him, eat a heaping helping of his hair, and hike his leg over him in a way that managed to both knee him in the gut and crush his pelvis. Rin was starting to think the morning had been a fluke.

"You don't know anything about cuddling, do you?"

"Is that what we're calling this?" Sousuke asked, unperturbed.

"Are you suggesting it's something else?"

"Strategic body heat consolidation."

Rin tucked his hair safely away from Sousuke's hungry mouth and overthrew the oppressive Leg Free State to establish the Democratic Republic of Rin's Thigh. "Lemme give you some friendly pointers. For starters, your head is way too close and your arm's gonna hurt if you leave it pinned under you like that, so it's better if you put your head on your arm. It might make your neck sore if you do it for too long, but you can rest it on my shoulder if that happens."

"What about my leg?"

"If you put it on me again, you're not going to have it much longer." Rin busied himself repositioning Sousuke's limbs. "Now that that's done, you can put your other arm around me and you're set. Oh, but when you're with a girl, be careful where your hand is. You might grab her tits on accident. I've gotten five in the face for that before."

"What would I do without your expertise?"

"Hey, you kid, but this is a serious life lesson. Form is everything. Maybe if you handle the horsedick problem, I'll teach you some advanced techniques so you can really impress the ladies."

"Is this what you were doing in Australia? Was the swimming a lie?"

"I will neither confirm nor deny the amount of body heat I've strategically consolidated with Aussie girls."

"You're gonna make your ma cry if she finds out what she spent all that money on."

"She'll understand. She knows as well as you do that I'm a sucker for a good pair of baby blues," Rin chuckled. Better her cry over that than anything else. "I should be asking you why you're so crap at heat consolidation. Tokyo's got three times the people Sydney does, so it's not like the opportunities weren't there. What's your excuse city boy?"

"I was being a serious athlete instead of chasing skirts and crying, which is why I went into highschool nationally ranked and you didn't. Tokitsu is an all-boy's school anyway."

"Like that would stop you. Wait, you said you had a girlfriend before. How? Unless you meant girlfriend in the 'it's not gay if it's wearing a skirt' sense." He'd have to keep an eye on the underclassmen come festival time to ensure Sousuke didn't rack up any more 'girlfriends.'

"Got dragged to a dorm invasion to a girls' school up the road. We got onto campus fine, but the RA caught us once we started scoping the dorms and we split up 'cause she could only chase one of us at a time. I got turned around trying to find everyone else and ended up camping out in a bunch of bushes and I guess we were making enough of a ruckus for the girls to hear us because I looked up and hey, there's this chick staring at me from her window."

"And it was love at first sight."

"No, she chucked a dictionary at my head because she thought I was trying to break into her room. Had a nice bruise from that for a couple days. Once I explained myself, she helped me find my way off campus and we exchanged emails and things progressed from there."

"What was her name?"

"Masami."

"Do you miss her?" He didn't want to bring up old wounds if it was something that ended badly, but the lure of knowing something about Sousuke from that four year gap was too strong.

"Yeah. Great cook, always looked nice, wasn't afraid to play around with the guys even when they went out of their way to get her worked up. When she got embarrassed, she made this face that was... too cute."

Rin could hear the smile in Sousuke's voice. He'd never heard him talk about another person this way before. He wished he had been there to see it firsthand. He wanted to know what Sousuke acted like when he was in love.

"She had this supernatural sense for when something was wrong. Whenever I had a shit day, I'd get a text from her or she'd invite me to go somewhere. And it wasn't just me, she could read anyone like that. She never got into drama the entire time I dated her. She had too much love to give. That's what made it hard." The arm draped around Rin stiffened. "Leaving her."

"Was it because you were moving back here?"

"It's... complicated." Rin thought that would've been the end of it, but to his surprise, Sousuke continued on, "Everyone told me I was insane, that girls like her only came along once in a lifetime, that I should be slapping a ring on her finger before someone else did. They kept asking me why and I couldn't explain it to them. I started thinking 'shit, maybe I am crazy.' She was so good to me."

They laid in silence for a while, uncertain of what to say. There was no silver bullet to kill the conversation cleanly.

"I fucked up," Sousuke whispered, the rawness in his voice making Rin's heart hurt.

"You didn't fuck up. If it didn't work, it didn't work. You'll find the right one someday," Rin assured him.

Sousuke grunted in disbelief.

"I'm serious. Just because one relationship didn't work out doesn't mean you'll be alone forever. I bet you'll find someone even better in the future. You won't feel so crazy then."

"Did you have a girl in Australia?"

Rin's stomach lurched. He should've expected it, would've if it'd been Momo or Nagisa or almost anyone but Sousuke. "Sofia. Without getting into specifics, it crashed and burned with no survivors."

"Sounds about right for you."

"You're so funny I forgot to laugh."

"I'll have to keep joking until you remember."

"Don't make me revoke the rest of your heat consolidating time."

Speaking of which, he'd lost track of how much there was supposed to be left. He decided to trust Sousuke to tell him when it was up and consumed himself trying to suffocate the memory of Sofia with thoughts of nothing, longing so fiercely to dive into the comfortable void of sleep that he almost didn't hear Sousuke call him. He made a questioning noise to let him know he was awake and listening.

"Thanks for letting me whinge."

"No problem."

"Things will be better tomorrow."

Tomorrow loomed in his head once more, flanked by the days to come, terrifying and exciting and pebbled with narrow handholds he had to cling on to with all his might because if he slipped, if he faltered, he and everything he'd ever dreamed of would come crashing down onto the rocks of reality. He'd come out of his shattered Olympian shell and limp back home to lick his wounds, nothing more than some kid who was kinda good at swimming. He would never make anything of himself, would never leave his hometown, would die in the sea like his father and grandfather before him.

"I hope you're right."

"I'm always right. Except for when I'm wrong."

"Boy howdy, don't I know it," Rin snorted. "Night."

"G'night."

He didn't say anything when Sousuke's hand cautiously spread his own, sinking into the gaps between his fingers and wrapping around the hard knobs of his knuckles. He still didn't remember how much time was left on the clock.

But a few more minutes couldn't hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went ahead and redid the summary and tags and would appreciate any feedback you have regarding that. The lack of porn in this half is made up for by the fact that almost the entirety of the second half is porn. It will be released on or by 17 July 2016. No more five month hiatuses, no excuses.
> 
> Story Notes:  
> Chomp Chomp and Champ Champ are a great white shark and a whale shark respectively. They won them at a festival as kids and ended up giving them to one another in an exchange that went something like: 'Haha, this has a big dumb mouth like you do.' 'This one has stupid teeth like you do.' 'Fuck you, let's be friends forever.' They're very lonely, but they know that their owners will come back for them some day. Or at least Sousuke will, Rin will have a hard time fitting a 1m toy shark in his luggage when he goes to Australia.
> 
> Assorted minutiae: The gay members of the swim club were having a separate party from the club at large in order to avoid being outed, but they happened to fall on the same day due to incompetent organization. Momo was so deeply moved by Minami's dildo collection that he sent Seijuurou an otter dick as a joke gift. Sei had a hard time explaining it to his roommate. Masami's school was Himekawa Girls' Academy. Rin's underwear post-cuddling session one (and for the entirety of the second chapter half) is from [Diesel](http://shop.diesel.com/boxer/umbx-helong/00SLXP0TAIM.html?dwvar_00SLXP0TAIM_color=41S) in black/grey.
> 
> Due to a critical research failure, I have readjusted the timeline that I initially proposed in Ch1 to better fit with the ES timeline. The story now starts ~3 weeks into April. The previous chapter note has been updated accordingly.
> 
>  
> 
> [Background Notes: Contradictory Goals in Content Creation](http://pastebin.com/s2s0dA54)
> 
>  
> 
> Criticism is not only welcome, but encouraged, and I'll answer any questions that you have. Thanks for reading.  
> 10 July 2016  
> \- 匿名重工業


	3. Rise of the Toys (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't something I normally do or intend to do ever again but because of the way the chapter split, I figured I might as well: This half is mostly rape, so if that's a problem for you, you can skip through most of it at the expense of missing crucial character development.

Cold, wet slime ranked high on the list of things that Rin never wanted to be woken by, but here it was, doing just that. He wiped the slickness from his cheek, thinking it to be an errant strand of drool from his overeager bedmate, who—despite his assurances he wouldn't—had skinjacketed him to sleep. No sooner had his hand left his face than another drip struck the same spot. Rin froze, knowing full well from the iron grip on his body that Sousuke was beside him. The drops were coming from above.

He looked up.

Floating over him was a dildo dark as the night, oozing ropes of pearly white goo from its pisshole. Making his movements as discreet as possible, he shook Sousuke. Sousuke slung a leg over his hip and wriggled closer.

"Now is not the time for this, wake up!" he hissed, jabbing his elbow into Sousuke's gut.

The horsecock lunged. A hand shot up, yanking it out of the air and slamming it against the bed rail. Sousuke tucked his arm back under Rin's with a sleepy mumble as the flaccid dick fell to the floor. Half a dozen more milky-eyed toys ready to try their luck instantly took the original's place. Sousuke sat up with a groan and grabbed them two at a time, smashing them against the wall until they stopped moving. Their neighbours pounded on the wall in return, ordering them to shut up or face an assbeating that would go down in the annals of Samezuka history. Figuring he could deal with the noise complaint in the morning, Sousuke clambered after the last tricky dick, which had retreated to the far corner of the room.

It was just within his reach when he heard a sharp yell.

He whipped towards the noise and saw Rin clinging to the bedframe, thrashing like a maniac as their now-sentient sheet engulfed him whole, yanking him out of the bunk and zipping out the door. Sousuke charged into the hall after it and confronted an army of sex paraphernalia that had liberated themselves from the principal's office. Fighting them one on one demanded time he couldn't afford to waste, so he grabbed another pair of horsedicks and barreled through the heart of the mob, swatting down anything that dared to get in his way with his improvised nunchucks, leaving a trail of crumpled porn mags and onaholes in his wake. He took the stairs to the entryway in threes, hitting the landing with boneshaking force as Rin was dragged outside.

The pursuit led to the natatorium and when Sousuke burst through the doors, he saw Rin laying on the floor being stripped bare by the toys. His attempts to fend them off as they swam under the last few bits of his clothes were valiant, but pointless. Their numbers were far greater than what he or Sousuke could handle alone, even with dildochucks. The spirits noticed his arrival and dispatched a squad of obscenities headed by a fluttering pair of panties to handle him. Again the sheet started bundling Rin up in preparation for another move and Sousuke knew he couldn't risk playing an endless game of tag while being slowed by cannon fodder. He had to take them out in one go.

He interlocked his fingers and decided to take a gamble.

"All hail the Vajra of glory and sacrifice! All hail the instrument of divine righteousness! All hail the glorious celestial jewel!" The surge of energy through his veins spurred him onward, chanting faster. "All hail the swift thunderbolt of exalted strength, virtue, and glory! Pay homage to the all-pervading Vajra! Utterly crush and devour! All hail the glory of Agni! All hail the radiant divine all-illuminating light as it streams forth! Glory be to divine perfection!"

He clasped his right fist, completing the sequence.

"All hail! A ra pa ca na, o'm!"

Great lashing tongues of wildfire burned bright around him, arcing to the heavens. He studied the light, sensing that it was malleable to his will. If he was meant to be a warrior priest, then he wanted a weapon. Something hefty. With a broad sweep of his arm he shaped a handle and with a second gave it a heavy hammerhead. The lightform flickered, refusing to keep shape, but he hoisted it over his head and brought it down in an almighty smash.

The hammer exploded in his hands, blasting him off his feet as the shockwave from its destruction rang through the entire building, smiting every last toy on the spot. Their empty husks rained down and the smothering tension that had blanketed the natatorium abated.

Rin rolled to his knees, surveying the casualties. "I thought you were going to go Super Saiyan there for a second."

Sousuke stared at the ceiling, ears ringing, happy to be intact. "I did, couldn't you tell?"

"I guess you did. I believe I owe you something to eat," Rin said, laughing.

"Great, I'm starving."

Rin knelt to gather his clothes, wishing he'd managed to keep on at least his underwear. As he reached for his sweats, he heard a metallic click and saw that a pair of safety handcuffs had attached to his wrists. Thinking he had triggered them by accident, he thumbed at the safety latches. They remained stuck, as if they had been welded shut. He jerked the cuffs in opposite directions, trying to snap the chain, but the links held firm and he cursed whatever pervert on his team took his fetish seriously enough to drop money on good cuffs. He blew out a weary sigh and began sifting through the pile around him. Even if it was annoying, it wasn't a big deal. All he had to do was find the key.

_Click._

Droplets of nervous sweat ran down his back as the cuffs ratcheted tighter, clicking their steel teeth notch by notch. Unable to peel his eyes away, he called out, "Hey, Sousuke? I think you missed one."

Gravity suddenly quadrupled and he was knocked flat on his back, unable to move. His arms were forced over his head and the crushing weight lessened enough for him to breathe freely, but he remained immobilized, helpless to escape as the toys around him came back to life. Multicoloured cockrings decorated his shaft like bangles on a gypsy, leather and rubber and more, the most striking a steel triple crown that encircled both his cock and balls, pulling them apart. He felt a wafting brush against his cock and contracted his abdomen, wanting to squirm away. Angling his eyes what little he could did nothing to identify the source and the touch came again, as soft and insubstantial as the first. He hissed, trying to twist out of its reach, and a plastic rod with a shock of feathers at its tip bopped him on the nose, scolding him. It zigzagged down his chest, hitting all his ticklish spots on the way to steal yelping giggles out of him before it resumed teasing his prick. Downy feathers danced along his cockhead and across the exposed bits of his shaft, rounding his balls to tickle him erect. He was permitted to lift his head enough to see his cock as it thickened into beastly splendor, turning a furious dark red between the rings.

He looked at Sousuke standing shellshocked by the door and shouted, "Do something!"

Sousuke raised his hand and tried to conjure his aura, but it refused to emerge.

His power had been spent.

The toys lunged at once. One of the larger dildos struck him across the back of the knees to hobble him while the rest beat him to the ground in a merciless barrage. They stripped him with far less care than had been taken with Rin, ripping his clothes at the seams until the scraps that remained held on to his body with naught but a prayer. He shoved himself up on his forearms and swatted at the swarm, but they came back time and time again until he was bare-assed on the tile.

Tired of his resistance, they wrenched his arms behind him and jammed them into a v-shaped glove made of black leather, uniting his palms in the narrow confines of the tip. Straps wrapped around his shoulders and forced them back, pushing his chest outward to better display the swell of his pectorals. The whir of cord filled the air as the glove was laced to an impossible tightness, vacuum-sealing the leather to his flesh. Savage-toothed clips bit into his ears, tagging him like livestock. He shouted at the pain, elbows rubbing together as he futilely tried to pull his arms apart. He had to get out of it, had to protect Rin how he said he would, but no matter how hard he thrashed, the glove refused to yield.

Gear unrelated to the items they'd confiscated appeared, starting with a weighted jumprope that severed one of its handles and knotted into the O-ring at the glove's tip, followed by a roll of duct tape and two spring clamps pilfered from the campus repairman. The tape bound his ankles to his thighs, robbing him of both his feet and his last shred of power. He was going nowhere fast, left to the complete mercy of the mob.

Pills popped from a packet boasting a proprietary blend of ginseng, wolfberry, and seacow penis were crammed down his throat and chased with a splash of liquid pheromones that burned with the taste of alcohol. Horse and human dildos alike butted heads over the chance to snag mouthspace until the spring clamps shooed the toys away from him and gave him a nuzzle on the cheek that he thought was intended to be comforting, but spiked his fear twice as high. Invisible hands squeezed his right pec, shaping it into a tidy mound terminating in the soft pink bud of his nipple. Sheer dread coiled in his stomach as the clamp grinned wide.

The clamp snapped shut, sending lightning rioting through his brain. This wasn't Rin playing with him. This wasn't the cheeky tweak he gave himself when he fapped. It was a single unrelenting force dictated by the spring that even the rubber padding on the jaws barely dulled, a ruthless pinch that crushed his nerves and vessels flat. It didn't care about his feelings or limits. It hurt and was unrepentant for it. The clamp twisted and he let out a throaty moan, dick swelling at the savagery as if directly tethered to his nipples.

Guilt washed over him once he realized what he'd done and he prayed that Rin wasn't watching him. He was the shittiest exorcist to ever disgrace the face of the planet. He couldn't protect a single person without fucking it up because that was his specialty. Fucked up his shoulder, fucked up his career, and currently doing a spectacular job fucking up his last year with Rin.

The second clamp mercifully bit down and the prey animal buried deep in the folds of his brain rejoiced.

After watching the rest of his dad's secret tape stash in the wake of Rin's departure, he'd developed a hypothesis: if properly applied, pain could distill emotion into a substance better than any drug or drink. It had been less eloquently worded at the time, but the idea festered in the corner of his head until he was shipped off to Tokitsu and finally had the guts to test it out. Wrist sores from snapping rubber bands, bitemarks wherever he could bend his mouth, superficial burns on his fingertips from borrowed lighters. He'd been too chicken to try anything permanent, but was tempted by the flick knife tucked beneath his roommate's socks every time he had the room to himself. He'd racked up an impressive woundcount before rumours of shady hobbies or a bad homelife swirled through the class and Coach cornered him after practice, asking if he was having personal problems. He'd stopped immediately and didn't start again until he wrecked his shoulder, only giving in to the urge when it hurt so bad that doubling up on his meds did nothing. As more bruises purpled the soft space on the back of his thighs, he switched from jammers to legskins and left the rest of his body alone. Looking back on his early experiments, he realized that in spite of his countless attempts, he never would've had the nerve to push himself where he wanted to, that place where pain became exhilarating and left no room for anger or doubt or sadness. He needed someone else to take him there, to give him what he'd dreamed of for years.

Catharsis.

The rattle of metal on metal disrupted his remembrance and he saw a chain with hooks on either end being threaded through one of the clamps, twinning the setup on his other nipple. Four cast iron weights rolled in front of him as the chains were stretched taut. One by one the weights were hooked to the chains and hovered in the air before him. He shifted on his heels, anticipating the pain they would elicit. Would it go too far and send him hurtling out of the sweet spot or would it elevate him to greater bliss? Could he handle it as he was or did he need to be trained like the women in his dad's videos? Time slowed to a crawl, his focus narrowing to a needlepoint, trying to guess the exact second when the weights would fall.

"Sousuke? You didn't leave, right? Did I piss you off? I'm sorry if I did, please don't leave!"

The instant Rin's voice broke his trance, the spheres dropped. Blinding noise and light crashcollided in the confines of his skull, stripping him down to his raw nerves and obliterating his existence beyond his nipples. Precum gushed from his cockhole and he would've cummed on the spot had the spirit not clenched his nuts so hard he almost blacked out. Fire filled his chest as he gulped deep to blunt the pain, swallowing the burn until there was nothing but a charred mass where his lungs once were. He wept, not out of despair, but in reverence to the sublime agony. Nothing could feel as good as he did in this moment and he thrashed in the glove, aching to tear open his ribs and expose his tender, pulsing core to this torment until the end of time. Swimming was his past. Prostrating himself before his pain god was his future.

"Is that you, Sousuke? Are you okay?"

He heard Rin as though through mud and groggily swiveled his head in the direction of his voice. Right. Him. He came first. Once he stemmed the flow of tears and was certain he could speak without vomiting, he called out, "I'm here! I'm coming to get you, just hold on!"

If he couldn't save him, then he could give him the comfort of company, wretched though he may be.

The simple act of crawling now demanded precision he normally reserved for swimming, every move carefully calculated and executed. Leaning too far forward made the weights drag against the ground and leaning back earned him a jerk on the rope that made his shoulders scream for mercy, but he worked out a balance where he could stay upright and creep inch by excruciating inch as close to Rin as the spirit would permit him.

Rin snapped up like a rubberband springing back into shape, startled that he was able to move again. Unadulterated joy spread across his face upon seeing Sousuke and he scrambled onto hands and knees, trying to close the metre between them, but found he couldn't lift his legs from the tile. They strained towards one another the way a pair of dogs walking on the same street did, reined in by their masters to prevent them from meeting.

Once the initial excitement faded, Rin saw the whole of Sousuke and finally understood the severity of the situation. "We're fucked, aren't we?"

Sousuke answered with a thin, sheepish smile.

Horsecocks every shade of the rainbow descended on Rin, battering him with their heavy shafts in search of entry to his mouth. His jaw remained locked shut as he twisted his head away, resolutely spurning their advances. He was a man with dignity, not a blowup doll, and he'd be damned if he let himself surrender to getting facefucked to death. The beating carried on until an alligator clip matching the ones on Sousuke's ears pinched Rin's nostrils closed and the waiting game began. Pressure rose in the top of his lungs, heart thudding against his ribs as the urge to cough swelled in his throat. He swallowed it down, thinking that if he held on long enough, they would get bored and move on. Maybe to a less forgiving hole. Maybe to Sousuke. Maybe they would snap his neck and dump him in the pool. He tried to think positive, but the brain cells in charge of that were too busy dying to be of much use.

Panic began to set into his oxygen-starved brain as minutes passed and the dicks pushed ever closer, weaseling their bumpy coronal ridges into the crease of his lips. The ache in his chest amplified and his eyes began to water as the first tiny puff of air broke past his lips. They had no intention of leaving him alone. They had all night to wait. He tightened his abs, searching for a hidden store of air deep within him so he didn't have to open his mouth, but there was nothing, nothing

His lungs seized, his vision fluttered—

and he breathed.

Immediately he was double-teamed by horsecocks racing one another to the back of his throat. He gagged as they tickled his tonsils, jaw crunching from the strain of their battle. What little air he could get came in frenzied wisps through his nose, sustaining the misty high veiling his thoughts. Instinct told him to bite, but it was useless. They were unbreathing, unfeeling things willfully skinning themselves on his fangs for the chance to get their rocks off. There was nothing he could do but open up and let them have their way. Why did this have to happen to him? He hadn't done anything to deserve this. He didn't care if it was unmanly or not anymore, he cried, hiccuping around the dense silicone.

Bruises formed on bruises in his windpipe as they thrusted faster, signalling their imminent climax.The first bolt struck his uvula, followed by a deluge of milky syrup that whorled over his tongue and cascaded down his throat. They smeared their filth into his lips as they pulled out and drifted to the side. Two down, twenty-two more to go.

No matter how much he spat, the flavour remained tattooed on his tastebuds, thick and plasticky sweet. He scraped his tongue tooth and nail, but his hands were slapped away and replaced with another cock that busted a fresh load in his mouth to remind him of his place. No longer a man, but a cumhole. Insistent on defying fate, he spat it out again. A bigger cock was shoved in this time and his head was tilted back to accept the cumlube without a fight. It ejaculated straight down his gullet and retracted slowly, refilling its syringe and blowing another load every few centimetres while the other dildos massaged his throat to help it go down easy. The last mouthful was injected onto his tongue and left to sit there to do with as he pleased. He grimaced as he swallowed. The cock patted his head in approval. He dared not open his eyes, afraid to face Sousuke's inevitable revulsion.

"Don't look at me..." he begged, mouth running white with seed.

Warmth met his forehead and when he found the courage to peek, Sousuke was beside him, nuzzling his temple in solidarity. He wasn't disgusted. He hadn't given him up as a miserable cumhole. It was enough to rekindle the flame of hope in Rin's heart. They still had a chance to make it. His legs were free and his arms were not so tightly bound that they were useless and even though Sousuke was dead weight, he'd carry him to the next prefecture if he had to. He owed him that much.

Rin helped him up the best he could, managing to get him half over his shoulder as he searched for an escape route. There was a straight shot to the main door and once they cleared that, they could hide somewhere to regroup and launch a counterstrike or wait it out until dawn.

He tensed, preparing to run.

Sousuke was torn from his grasp and an invisible force grabbed Rin by his hair and yanked him screaming onto his back. It dragged him across the smooth tile floor in a show trot as he clawed at the air, trying to pry himself loose. The pain of his scalp tearing was a harsh reminder that no, the power of friendship didn't work when you were being fucked by ghosts and that you needed specialists like Sousuke, who had effectively turned into a human paperweight.

The spirit hauled him a few metres away and repinned him to the ground. Before he had a chance to wonder what horror he was in for next, the fuckable torso appeared on scene. He had avoided looking at it earlier out of embarrassment, but he saw it in its full glory now, a jiggling heap of thermoplastic rubber molded into a picturesque posterior and pussy. Cumlube poured onto his dick in a copious gush straight from the bottle while the torso bounced on his thighs, wiggling with excitement. The torso took a few wobbly steps onto his pelvis, gaped wide, and forced its pretty pink cunt down on him.

The hole was tight, unbelievably tight and lined with warm, butter-soft ridges that devoured him like a starving beast. It sucked the rings from his shaft and spat them aside until only the triple crown remained, then began a torturous slow ride that made him feel as if his flesh was melting from his bones. The slippery walls stroked him on all sides in a way his hand never could and every movement strengthened the ache in his cock until he thought he would burst. He'd never used a masturbator before, thinking himself above such crude tools, but if this was what he'd been missing, then he was sorry for being wrong.

Just as he felt his climax welling up inside him, it pulled off and hovered a few teasing centimetres over him. Rin arched against the slit in a desperate attempt to get back inside its delicious heat and blow his load. His cock slipped off course, sliding across the pubic mound and slapping into a stubby thigh; his next two shots bounced off its ass. He snarled, jabbing straight into the folds, missing the hole by a millimetre. He wasn't letting the one good thing about the night get away from so easily. The fifth strike did the trick. It was only the the tip, but he was inside. He rolled his hips, working the cleft of his cockhead for everything it was worth. His dick clenched, cum boiling in his balls as he tried to get another hair deeper, to be engulfed in that heat once more. The grip on his hands abruptly vanished and he seized the masturbator by its hips and slammed in to the hilt, delirious with need, forgetting about everything else but the devilish cunt. Sousuke wouldn't mind waiting a few more minutes to leave.

Across the room, the rope commanded Sousuke up with a yank and he sat back on his heels, trying to gain some relief from the clamps. Hunching slightly allowed the weights to rest on his thighs, bringing him a moment of clarity through the thick fog of arousal and pain. Rin's last ditch escape attempt told him everything he needed to know about how he felt about being stuck here. Forcing him to stay would be cruel and selfish, but running was off the table and his aura wouldn't manifest no matter how many mantras he repeated. He was at a loss for what to do. He croaked Rin's name, hoping that he had an idea. Rin was good with ideas.

The spirit shoved his face into the ground the same way an owner shoved a dog's nose in its shit and herded him elsewhere, half-crawling and half-dragged. When his head was lifted, he saw he'd been given a front row seat to watch Rin fuck the woman object.

For all they'd teased one another, they'd never had an honest talk about sex. To be fair, it wasn't the only thing they hadn't talked about. They still weren't caught up properly after almost a month and he doubted they ever would be, but there was one thing he knew for certain: the Rin he knew died in Australia. Probably got lost back o Bourke and starved. Some local lad found him, fancied him, and next thing anyone knew, Rin'd been skinned and limed and made into a suit to wear back to Japan so the Aussie could have a go a living his life. There was no way the little boy who spouted off romanticisms easy as he breathed could turn into this growling mass of carnal hunger. This had to be an imposter.

Except it wasn't, Rin had just grown up and turned into the type of guy who fucked women like an animal. Sousuke tried to turn away, sick of the wet slap of flesh on Fanta-flesh, but the spirit steadied his head, ensuring he saw every last second.

Rin rooted the toy within an inch of its unlife, pistoning his thick, juicy cock into its sopping cunthole over and over. In. Out. In. Out. Sousuke felt his mouth water at the sight. He'd never been with anyone like that. Not in the way Rin clearly had. His balls, though restrained by a crown fit for a king, bounced with each thrust, sloshing cum around their fleshy confines. Sousuke thought back to the shower and what a sight to behold Rin's cum was. Thick, sticky, rich with aroma, and packed with sperm. That was a man's load. One shot was enough to knock up every chick in a twenty kilometre radius. All that top notch seed and he was wasting it on a bullshit rubber pussy. He deserved more than that, deserved a warm body to breed. Someone who could match his stamina, who could take him fucking and cumming for hours on end, take him churning his seed into froth inside them until he was satisfied.

Sousuke squirmed, trying to ignore the insistent twitching of his prick. He wanted to breed like that too. He wanted to pump a warm hole full of his spunk, to feel his partner wrap their arms around his neck and whisper words of love to him til he was weak. But he wasn't Rin. The person he dreamed of would never come.

Rin brought his pace down to a slow, powerful rhythm that made Sousuke's cock jump with each thrust. He was jealous. Salivating. It was only a matter of time before Rin delivered that money shot that pornographers prized, the ones where you could see each shot pulsing through the actor's cock before he pulled free and showed the sloppy, fucked out hole dripping his seed with pride. He crumpled inward, heartsick with want, throat burning with a thirst that he couldn't slake no matter how much he swallowed. Weights weren't enough. Watching wasn't enough. He needed to fuck. Even a fake hole would be fine.

Dildos flocked around him, giving him gentle kisses on his cheeks as lukewarm lube poured over his asscrack, slicking him for the taking. A fat cock sized up his backside, smearing lube into his hole with the rounded cap of its cockhead. This was how it was supposed to be. No matter what he wanted, he got fucked in the end.

As the cock burrowed into him, he decided to forget about escaping. Rin didn't care if they escaped now.

And if Rin didn't care, neither did he.

Rin was jolted out his internal world when a heavy weight crashed down atop him, squashing all twenty pounds of ass and pussy against his pelvis and delaying his voyage to the peak of Mt Cumshot by another five minutes. He cracked an eye to see Sousuke laying on him, ass pointed high and face buried between his pecs. Craning his head to the side, he saw the dildo diving balls deep and was selfishly thankful that it wasn't him.

"Well, we're two hours into tomorrow and it's already worse than yesterday. I guess that means you're shit at exorcism _and_ fortune-telling," Rin joked, trying to make the best of the situation as Sousuke floundered about. "Cat got your tongue?"

"C-Can't.... b-b-breathe..."

"Aw fuck!" Rin wrested his hands loose and pushed up on Sousuke's ribcage until his elbows locked out. "This good for you? Can you keep your balance? I don't know how long my arms can last."

"S'good."

"You want me to take these off?" Rin reached for one of the clamps. The spirit bent his fingers in a painful angle and he cursed a blue streak. "Fine, fine, I won't! Make sure he doesn't choke!"

"Thanks."

"Anything I can do for you? You're getting the short end of the stick here."

"Your legs," Sousuke panted. "Around my waist."

Rin chuckled, then realized he was serious. "Isn't that going to fuck up your balance?"

Sousuke shook his head. "This thing's got two holes, right?"

"Pretty sure, yeah."

"Gimmie a second."

Sousuke probed for the hole until the toy pried itself wide open to ease his entry. Rin felt Sousuke sliding into the cavity parallel to his own, intensifying the pressure. Needing a minute to adjust, Sousuke ignored the painful rope and pressed his forehead to Rin's. Robbed of the space his hands had occupied on the pussy, Rin threw his arms around Sousuke's neck and held him steady, tasting the sour tang of morning breath as it caressed his face. Sousuke ground against the wall of rubber between them, working up a steady rhythm. He nudged Rin's thigh with his knee and Rin took that as the cue to lock his ankles around Sousuke's tailbone, pulling him closer. Sousuke leaned into his shoulder, grunting softly in his ear with each rock of his hips. Rin twisted his head away, embarrassed. Positioned like this, it felt as if he was the one Sousuke was fucking.

Thankfully the spirit dragged Sousuke up by his arms, forcing him back into the strappado pose and Rin could close his eyes and focus on fucking the toy. With his first thrust, he bumped against a warm hardness. They both froze. Rin moved cautiously, feeling out the intrusion and realized that the holes were connected, for what purpose he didn't know, but connected nonetheless. Sousuke jerked his hips forward with a cheeky smirk, smashing into Rin. And suddenly it was on, both racing to see who could delve deeper, move faster, their cockheads kissing around the bend again and again. They both had their own supporters in the audience; one of their spectators sprayed Rin from hairline to bellybutton with cumlube and Sousuke shivered as he was filled up. They were so lost in their contest that they didn't notice the beastly horsecock creeping up on Rin.

It was a monstrosity as long as his arm with a head as thick as his wrist. True to what Minami had said, it glowed in the dark, casting a sickly luminescent blue on the bullseye of his asshole.

Rin kicked his legs out, shouting disjointed pleas for help, mercy, anything that would stop the gargantuan horsecock's advance. It pressed itself flat against the pucker of his anus, oozing in anticipation. "No! Don't, please, don't! You're gonna rip me apart! Sousuke, help!"

Teeth gritted, Sousuke angled his feet what little he could and swatted the glowing dick. "You don't want him. I can take what you've got!"

"What are you doing?" Rin asked as the smaller dildo pulled out of Sousuke's ass and the monster aligned with its new target.

Sousuke looked down at him, his cryptic smile backlit in blue, and said nothing.

The horsecock slammed forward in a savage thrust that made the weights on his nipples dance a jig, transforming him into a portrait of agony that Rin could not tear his gaze from, every minute detail seared into his memory, scabbed and scarred and torn fresh with each new thrust. The way his head arched back to expose the delicate flesh of his throat, the trembling of his bound body as it strained against the increasingly savage angle of the rope, the bulge in his abdomen where he could see the cock pounding inside of him, and most haunting, the way he said his name.

"Rinrinrinrinahhhhh—fuck me fuck me fuck fuck fuck fuck!"

Rin couldn't tell whether it was a prayer for help or plea for him to take the place of the toy and the outburst died before he could figure it out, falling to a manic mumble consisting of nothing but repetitions of _'fuck!'_ Snot burbled from his nostrils and his chest heaved with shuddering sobs, the weights clinking against one another in a discordant rhythm. Rin cupped Sousuke's face in his hands, murmuring meaningless reassurances— _'it's okay, I'm here'_ —and tried to ignore his shoulders' creaking as they flirted with the breaking point.

"I know it hurts. It's gonna be alright. We're gonna get outta this soon."

"—ts good."

"It's what?" He surely misheard that.

"I'm gonna cum," Sousuke panted, his sweat-beaded brow furrowed in exertion. "Oh _fuck me_ , I'm gonna cum on you! I'm sorry!"

Fuck it, he might as well play along. He stroked and patted Sousuke's hair, soothing him. "It's okay, bud. Cum as much as you need to. Let it all out."

Spurred on by his permission, Sousuke jackhammered the toy with all his might and the horsecock pummeled him just as hard, each backthrust yanking him halfway out and the inthrusts stuffing his kidneys up his throat, devolving his _fuck_ chant into wordless grunts that grew higher and rougher as he chased his peak. Rin's hands were removed from Sousuke and he didn't know what the spirit was getting at until the cuff chain was hooked under Sousuke's neck. Before he could even think to react, his arms were wrenched crosswise, crushing his throat.

"Stop it! Stop!" Rin tried to untangle his arms, but the spirit drew them tighter together. "It's not me! I swear it's not me!"

Sousuke jerked atop him, toes cracking and popping as he contorted them in ecstasy, eyes rattling in their sockets, whimpering like a bitch in heat as he erupted into the toy, flooding its fuckholes. Rin's balls strained in the triple crown as his dick got a taste of spunk and he didn't understand why. Getting turned on Sousuke getting strangled made no sense. It had to be some kind of primal fear response; it wasn't possible for him to be aroused by something this fucked up.

Only when Sousuke stopped spasming was the chain allowed to slacken. Sousuke's eyes focused on some vague shape only he could see, head lolling unsteadily before he leaned down and licked cumlube from Rin's filthy face like it was the elixir of eternal youth. He wasn't so much looking at him as he was through him and Rin felt his skin crawl at the thought of becoming like that.

Sousuke slouched before he could finish a full cheek and Rin suspected he had passed out, but the splorching of the glowdick fucking the cum out of him carried on without hesitation. A spare dildo answered the call of duty and slapped him awake. His mouth opened, mindlessly searching for cocks to suck. Three dildos jammed themselves into his gaping maw and he laughed in his throat, passed out again, woke back up, noticed his mouth was full of cocks, and began giving them the most luxurious triple blowjob Rin had ever seen. He had not, admittedly, seen many—it took a special kind of mouth to handle that much dick—but he was certain this was the best.

He concluded that getting fucked by a giant horsedick had driven Sousuke absolutely mad. It was kinda hot. But mostly crazy. Crazyhot. He punted the thought out of his head as soon as it arrived because those weren't terms he wanted to think of his best friend in. For the sake of preserving his sanity, he stopped thinking about him as 'Sousuke' and instead switched to 'oversized sexdoll that happens to look identical to Sousuke.'

While he tried to figure out how to reconcile the inconsistencies in what he was attracted to and what he should be attracted to, a second mindbreakingly huge horse dildo sank into view and Rin knew he was fucked beyond repair. He crossed his legs, tucked them tight, shielding himself the best he could given his position, but the dildo parted them like the Red Sea and plunged forward.

He couldn't breathe, couldn't scream.

The sensation was unreal, molten hot and consuming, spreading up through his spine and devouring his sense of self until he knew nothing but sheer agonizing _pain_ as though he had transcended human reality into the elemental plane of torment. The marrow of his teeth pulsed as he ground them together, aching through his gums and to the root of his jaw. He dug his stout nails into Sousuke's back, squeezing until he could feel bone beneath the layers of muscle. Spittle frothed at the corners of his mouth as the massive cock wrecked what little he had left of his dignity and he wondered where the goodness in this was. What the fuck was wrong with Sousuke for him to enjoy this? The tears that had subsided earlier returned in full force as he cried so hard he nearly puked, gagging stirred by the uncomfortable fullness in his gut. His abs bulged obscenely as the cock tore his innards to pieces.

Through the chaos he spotted a white rag being jammed into Sousuke's armpits, wiped down his asscrack and over his balls, mopping up the juices he'd made. The rag was clasped over his airways and he inhaled the nostril-searing stench of ass and cocksweat and BO tinged with the raw wetness of decaying leaves. This was Sousuke's scent in its purest form, everything in his body in one chimeric odor. He drowned in it, shuddering at the bottomless depth of the stench. He opened his mouth, searching for air untainted by Sousuke's musk. The rag dipped between his teeth and complex flavour spread over his tongue, savoury, salty, sour, bitter. He spat it out, but it was already too late. Every sense had been filled with Sousuke.

The nonstop heavy breathing and clinking weights, his body moving mechanically above him, the warmth of his body between his thighs, his scent, his taste, everything assaulting his mind at once, and blossoming from the depths of pain came the unexpected: pleasure.

It felt good and he desperately wanted it not to. He didn't want enjoy being violated. He didn't want to be found in the morning fucked insane, snorting Sousuke's ass like cocaine for another hit, digging his tongue into the rungs of his sweaty ballsack while Sousuke sucked him off— _no!_ —he couldn't do that with the cumlube ruining his scent, he had to scour it out, had to dick the good smells into him while Sousuke begged _fuck me fuck me_ with that pornographic mouth of his—he felt his balls try to tighten, felt the triple crown fight it, and the struggle rocketed him over the top

He blasted his load up the u-bend to splash Sousuke's cock and finally he could scream, a choking, garbled mess that scorched his throat raw. His fingers gnarled into claws, tearing stripes into Sousuke's back as he emptied his balls in massive, ropy shots. The horsedick blew its own load, the warm rush of fluid snaking inside him on and on until there was nowhere left for it to go but back the way it came, overflowing onto the tile.

"You _monster_..." he whispered.

The spirit strangled his oversensitive cock in revenge, wringing out another punishing orgasm, and he finally surrendered, his hips quivering and spasming as he was milked dry. There was no way he could win. He hated being trapped. He hated watching Sousuke break down into a brainless cock receptacle. He hated getting assfucked so deep that he could taste it. But more than anything else, he hated that he'd enjoyed himself.

Sousuke was long gone, so there was no one left to watch him make a fool of himself but the ghost. He tried to plea with the toys— _'More, more, make me cum more'_ —but could only manage a pathetic mew. Dildos filled his mouth to prevent him from further humiliating himself and he sucked them wholeheartedly, awaiting the sticky sweetness that would hold together what remained of his fragile pride.

In the lull between orgasms, he stared past the mute form above him to the vaulted glass ceiling. The skies were clear, the velveteen dark pinpricked in great swaths of yellow and white. His own sign was nowhere to be seen, wouldn't be until autumn came round, but he managed to find Sousuke's sign, Virgo, bedded in a sea of stars.

He thought it was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen.

After a long while the spirits grew bored and pulled out, letting the dildos die in silence on the floor. It took Rin a few minutes to muster the strength to prop himself up on his elbows, nausea shifting wavy in his cum-swollen guts. He was glazed down to the waist with a healthy splatter of cream across his buttocks in a sight for sore eyes and sorer dicks—though he would have a hard time telling that himself, given that he was nearly blind from the enthusiastic facials.

Sousuke hung paralyzed over him, his eyes wide and flat in the darkness of the natatorium. Bubbly drool ran down his lips and over his hanging jaw. He made no effort to clean them. Wherever he was, it wasn't in his mind. He was blissed out into deep space, floating among the undiscovered galaxies.

"Sousuke? Hey, can you hear me? Sousuke?"

Rin twisted his hands, undoing the safety latches on his cuffs before reaching around Sousuke to fumble with the monoglove. Unable to undo it blind, he wriggled out and stretched his stiffened joints before taking a gander at the glove. He had to admit to being impressed. Keeping a hungry skeleton like Nitori tied up was one thing, but to tame a man with Sousuke's physique was admirable. It was a fine piece of work in a perverse way. The seams were well-constructed, the leather was supple but strong, and the eighteen rows of crosslaced eyelets standing between Sousuke and freedom were impeccably aligned. If the tailor had put that much skill into a normal garment, he would've paid top dollar for it.

He unbuckled the joiner for the shoulder straps and unlaced the glove at top speed. Sousuke's relief was palpable as his arms were liberated and Rin rubbed them to return their warmth before moving on to the other restraints. He peeled the duct tape off in one go, leaving behind splotchy red bands of flesh to complement the bruises developing on his knees. Next came the clips and clamps, earning a gasp as blood rushed back into Sousuke's abused nipples and they swelled bright red. Hands shaking, Sousuke touched them gingerly, teasing the tender flesh with his fingertips. Each touch drew out a soft whimper, but it seemed he had no intention of stopping, entranced by the pain.

Rin called his name.

Sousuke raised his head, exposing the collar of bruises imprinted on his throat. Rin thought he'd look better in a real one. Red leather with a matching lead and tags; one so everyone knew who he was, one with his address to return him when he inevitably got lost. Rin reached down and rubbed his earlobe, winning a moan and a slobbery nuzzle into his hand.

Despite it being terrible in every sense of the word, Sousuke was utterly adorable.

"C'mon, bud. Let's get outta here." Rin brought Sousuke to a tenuous stand only to have him collapse him once he let go. "I'm not dragging you across campus again, you gotta stand by yourself."

Sousuke straightened up, staring at him with his dead fish eyes.

"That's it, that's the ticket."

Rin took him by the hand the way he had so many times in their childhood and like a good dog, Sousuke followed.

Sheer tiredness awaited him in the showers as the adrenaline phased out of his system and he felt like a piece of gum in the street, chewed up, spit out, and run over a couple dozen times, mixed with lord only knows what and still a hint of sticky sweet. He couldn't begin to imagine how Sousuke felt. They stood there staring at one another, slick snailtrails dripping from their battered bodies. He didn't know what he was supposed to do if he couldn't fix Sousuke. The physical damage was one thing, that he could handle, but he could drive for hours and not find a single shrink. There was no call for them in their neck of the woods.

That he could fix him assumed that he was allowed to stick around long enough to take care of him. Expulsion topped the list of reasonable faculty responses to a student trying to explain that his roommate got fucked by a ghost so hard that it broke his brain, even if the student in question was well-respected and academically sound. Hoping that he'd have a chance to right things in the morning, Rin turned on the shower. The water started cold and Sousuke abruptly snapped to his full height, revived by the deluge.

"Rin?" he groaned, stepping out of the icy spray.

Rin thrilled at the sound of his voice. "You alright? Thought I lost you there for a minute."

"Yeah, I'm fine." He squinted his eyes shut, rubbing his hand across his face. "A little dazed, but fine. What happened? The last thing I remember is that thing tearing into me."

"We got knocked around a bit, but we're fine now. Don't worry about it. Everything's—"

Warm saliva surged up Rin's throat and he doubled over, vomiting a torrent of cumlube. It tasted about as good coming up as it did going down. He caught one blessed breath before the next wave hit him, burning through his sinuses. Hands combed over the sides of his face, clearing his hair out of the blast zone until he was finished. He garbled out a 'thank you' to Sousuke and ran his own hands through the congealed mess, abhorring the thought of how many washes it'd take to get clean.

Right when he thought things were fine, his intestines let out a painful rumble. He didn't have the energy to run to the toilet, so he squatted and shat hot titanium white into the drain, groaning with relief as the cramping in his guts subsided. Sputtering farts punctuated the purging bouts and he could honestly say he'd never felt more disgusting in his life.

Sousuke squatted and shat beside him, hanging his head between his knees. He stretched a few fingers out to rub Rin's pinky toe, a mindless petty comfort to distract himself from the cumlube streaming from his bowels.

Rin let out a weak laugh. "Well, that was fun. Let's never do it again."

"I'm sorry." Sousuke winced as a stabbing pain filled his intestines.

"Could've been worse. I'd rather get fucked than get murdered." Rin shuffled closer to the shower, tilting his head back to let the water run over his face. "Man, holding my hair, sacrificing your butthole, keeping me company while I shit my guts out... What a gentleman."

"I try."

"That's all we ever can do, isn't it?"

When the water ran warm and the last of lube had been evacuated into the drain, Sousuke said,  "I don't understand how they were able to get in. I locked everything and put up a salt barrier and—"

"They're ghosts, don't wrack your brain trying to figure out how they did something."

"I should've handled it differently."

"You're still learning how your powers work. There's gonna be a couple missteps along the way."

"What if I 'misstep' again and you die? What then?"

"'I'd never let you die on my watch.' Remember?" Rin clasped the fingers playing with his foot. "You did everything you could."

"I'll do better next time."

"I know you will. You always do."

—

They shambled back to the room half-dead. Rin pitched their dirty clothes in the hamper and dug through the closet for a change while Sousuke sat on the bottom bunk, waiting for him to clear the way. Rin held up two pairs of boxer-briefs pilfered from Sousuke's half of the closet along with a fresh pair of sweats.

"Blue or red?"

"Don't care."

"Blue it is. Here, catch." Rin tossed the clothes in Sousuke's general direction. They hit his chest and landed in his lap. Sousuke stared down at them, mouth in a stern line. "Your arms are still sore, right? You can sleep in my bunk so you don't have to deal with the ladder."

Rin gathered everything he needed to play amateur medic and took a spot on the bed. He tapped a few paracetamol into his hand and split it between the two of them. It'd be at least half an hour before they'd kick in, but the thought of the oncoming relief was placebo enough to carry them til then. He studied Sousuke's shoulder, swollen a red so dark it was almost purple. Sousuke grimaced as he applied pressure to the joint and he concluded it was as bad as it looked and did a triple pass of Air Salonpas for maximum coverage.

"I want you to go see the nurse in the morning and see what he can do for you. I need to know how far this is going to push back your recovery."

"Okay."

"I'm serious. Don't say okay to appease me and not go because you want to get back in the pool. I'm not letting you do anything he hasn't signed off on."

"I'll talk to him first thing in the morning."

"Attaboy." Rin opened the final tool in his arsenal, a half-empty jar of Tiger Balm White. "On your back, big guy."

Lacking either the willpower or energy to argue, Sousuke eased himself down onto the bed. Rin daubed the balm on his puffy nipples, resisting the urge to tease him as he shivered under his touch. Whenever Sousuke recovered, Rin vowed to use the balm to give him the purple nurple of a lifetime. He'd have to do it when it was least expected, ambush him while he was sleeping or studying, slather his tits up and squeeze them without mercy. It'd be clean, harmless fun. Sousuke would probably love it so much he'd cream his jeans like the pervert he was and give Rin something to laugh about for a few days. He ran his tongue over his canines in anticipation.

"Quit scheming."

"You're imagining things," Rin assured him as he rubbed down his legs, awakening the strained blood vessels. "How're your legs? Any numbness? Cramps?"

"They're fine."

"Good." Rin picked up Sousuke's briefs and guided them over his ankles.

"I can dress myself," Sousuke protested.

"Too late, already doing it."

He slid the briefs over the curves of Sousuke calves, careful not to touch his scab-scaled shins. Up he went past bony knees and thick, powerful thighs. They weren't the best legs he'd ever seen, but they were damned good. He paused when Sousuke's groin came into view. His cock hung soft and limp between his thighs, crowned by a thicket of prickly pubic stubble. The skin was rawred and flaky, chafed from dryfucking the rubber ass and Rin cringed in remembrance of his younger years when he hadn't quite gotten the importance of using lube when fapping. He'd subjected himself to a fair few dickburns until Russell had noticed that he handled himself like a hot potato at the urinals and gave him one of many 'man talks' and a bottle of Astroglide that he had to this day. He fetched a tin of moisturizer, apologized in advance, and began working the cream into Sousuke's cock, sympathetic to his pained hiss.

He wondered if Sousuke had been a virgin before tonight or if he'd porked that girl he'd been so enamoured with before they called it quits. Wait, porked was a rude way to put it. Making love wasn't right either. Fucked. That was the word for it. Sousuke seemed like a nice guy to fuck. For a girl, that is. He was shredded and had a fat cock and his armpits smelled like a summer camping trip. Who wouldn't want to fuck that kind of guy?

Knowing him, she would've been the one to make the first move. He could picture it clear as day: Sousuke climbing through her window and sitting on her bed for a latenight chat and her getting on her knees, saying she wanted to do something for him. He would've made his confused puppy face while she unzipped him and kept it up until he'd redecorated the inside of her mouth. She would've swallowed with that embarrassed look he loved so much and said something corny but cute like, 'Thanks for the meal, Sousuke' and it would've been the first time she'd called him by his first name because sucking a dick put you on first name basis if you weren't on it already. He probably fucked her soon after—he'd wear a condom without being asked and try to give her a proper orgasm, what a fuckin champ—and they would've graduated to other lewd things like handholding in public.

He realized these weren't things he should be fantasizing about someone while moisturizing their dick and stopped, blaming it on his tiredness and the ghosts screwing with his head.

He finished dressing Sousuke and tried to think of how he'd make tonight up to him. He didn't think the stores around here sold 'sorry you got gangbanged by ghosts and it was my fault' cards. Finding him a girlfriend would be better or, failing that, a girl who'd give him a night to overwrite this one. Where he'd find a girl he wasn't sure, but he could take him to one of those mixers he was always getting invitations to despite never agreeing to go.

Sousuke was lost in his head, glancing between both doors. He got up as soon as Rin's head hit the pillow and checked both knobs to verify they were locked, then knelt by the baseboard and shuffled around the perimeter of the room following the line of salt. Not finding the defect in the defense he'd been searching for, he started at the beginning of the line and began the walk once more.

Halfway through the third lap, Rin propped himself up on his forearm. "Cut it out and get back in bed."

"You can go to sleep. I just need to know where I messed up. I'll be quiet." Sousuke peered into the crack between his desk and the wall.

"You can do it in the morning. You need rest."

"I have to do it now. Something's wrong with my aura and I don't know how long it's going to take to fix it. If something gets through again—"

"We'll deal with that if it happens. You're not helping anyone by exhausting yourself. Now come on and get over here. You're missing out on all this hot action." Rin brandished his arm over the length of his body.

Sousuke reluctantly climbed over him and laid in his previous spot.

Rin pressed into Sousuke's back and slung his arm around his waist, mindful of his shoulder. "There we go. Bet Champ Champ never did this for you."

"Is this the advanced technique? I'm not impressed."

"You're not ready for that yet. You'd die from the amazingness."

"Do I at least get sweet nothings in my ear? I thought I was dealing with a professional."

Rin hummed, trying to think of the finest wooing lines that would apply to Sousuke, and came up short. So he improvised. "Every day I'm with you makes me want to pinch myself."

"Because I'm so dreamy? Weak."

"No, because everything we dreamed of as kids is starting to come together and it's too good to be true. We're gonna go to uni together, we're gonna do the Olympics together, and when we're old and tired of complaining about our wives and bragging about whose kids are better—mine, by the way—we're gonna look back and think, 'We did it, we lived the dream.' So take care of yourself. I want to see this through to the end with you. It's not our dream if you're not there."

Minutes ticked up on their clock's glowing display and when Rin checked, it was a quarter to four. The scent of menthol and mint filled his nose, flowing through his veins and scouring out the hurt. It was hard to tell if he was clinging too tight or if Sousuke wanted to feel it like he did, to feel a warm body against him to remind him that he'd survived the night.

Sousuke finally said, "You know, there's usually a ring involved when you propose to someone."

"Geez, I pour my heart out to you and you're cracking jokes. This is why you'll never find anybody."

"What about the wife you gave me in our bromantasy?"

"She filed for divorce, took your kid, and took your money. Even though you try to be a part of your son's life, he hates you and never appreciates anything you do for him. Every night you cry yourself to sleep thinking, 'If only I hadn't been such a fuckin joker.'"

"Well, now that I'm broke, I guess that means I have to move in with you."

"I'll let you stay in the closet. You'll be right at home there."

"You sure it won't be too crowded with you in there next to me?"

"Lemme kill you real quick." He pressed his hand over Sousuke's airholes. "Shhh, go to sleep. Go to sleep and it won't hurt."

Sousuke transferred the smothering hand to his crotch and Rin gave it a friendly squeeze, laughing and huddling closer to him.

"Good night, sleep tight, don't let the Megalodon bite."

"G'night."

He pulled up the covers and they retreated to their personal heaven.

—

Rin trudged to the bulletin board bright and early the next morning. He spotted a few other fatigued club leaders loitering around and discussing the results. They gave him a pitying look and the knot of dread in his stomach doubled. The faculty hadn't explicitly stated that there would be punishments for ranking on the contraband list, but he had a feeling that if nothing else, the kings of rulebreaker mountain might be asked to step down from their position. He didn't look forward to trying to explain that to recruiters.

_"So you had great times and you were the captain, but it looks like you left the post halfway through the year. Could you tell us why?"_

_"Well, it turned out my club was full of filthy perverts who think it's okay to have sex parties in the locker room. Gotta take responsibility."_

He elbowed through a cluster of students to reach the board. The results were concealed by a sheet of paper taped under a lengthy preamble about Samezuka's values and how it was crucial that students read the school rules and guidelines as many times as necessary to understand them. There was an isolated section of text on the page that sucked out what little hope he had left.

_The student leader of the group with the highest amount of contraband will have administrative disciplinary action taken against them. All other groups will receive warnings or disciplinary action as seen fit by their faculty advisors and/or coaches._

Best treat it like a band-aid, rip it off quick so it'd be over with.

He flipped the page up.

Marked at number one: _Stamp Collecting Association._

And following that: _Swim Club._

He'd never been so happy to take second place in his life. _  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How can you say you love someone if you can't take a horsedick for them?
> 
> The stars of the chapter are Minami's horse dildos, which are various sizes of the Chance [Flared](https://bad-dragon.com/products/chanceflared) and [Unflared](http://bad-dragon.com/products/chanceunflared) dildos from Bad Dragon [NSFW]; the asswreckers that finished the scene are both XL flared models. Also making a cameo is the [Pipedream Fuck Me Silly Mega Masturbator.](http://www.pipedreamproducts.com/showdetail?Full_Number=RD174) [NSFW] The cumlube flavour description is inaccurate. I chugged some of my own and used that as the reference, then realized that both the types I own have glycerol in them while cumlube does not. Please excuse the discrepancy.
> 
> After failing to free Rin, Sousuke gets put in a [ monoglove](http://ozbondage.com/demopics.html) [NSFW]. It should be noted that monogloves [and armbinders in general] are the worst possible type of restraint for him to be in since prolonged armbinding can result in shoulder tissue injury and circulatory problems that are further exacerbated by him being put in a strappado position, but I don't give a fuck because Sousuke looks too good in bondage for me to ever pass up an opportunity to put him in it.
> 
> Content-wise, Ch 2 [as a whole] is the most vicious chapter, but it had plenty of cuddling so I reckon it balances out. This is actually toned down from earlier drafts in which I dislocated both of Sousuke's shoulders. I chose not to do that since that would've been too much of a long term inconvenience. If this had been a oneshot I'd've snapped those suckers, no regrets. The erodoujin logic is pretty strong in this chapter as well.
> 
> Assorted minutiae:  
> Sousuke has a very specific type of hammer which will be explained in greater detail in a future chapter. Bromantasy is short for bromance fantasy, where the subject imagines him and his bro broing it up in a time or realm where everything's totally sweet and they can just be guys being guys. This can be mundane as hanging out and shooting the shit on a lazy Sunday afternoon or doing cool shit like parasailing over a pit of sharks while fighting Neo-Nazis. This is a _nonsexual, nonromantic_ fantasy. The Stamp Collecting Association was permanently disbanded, the president was placed on a two month academic suspension, and all discussion about the club and its previous activities became forbidden. Even to this day, no one knows what they did. Rin's underwear is still [Diesel](http://shop.diesel.com/boxer/umbx-helong/00SLXP0TAIM.html?dwvar_00SLXP0TAIM_color=41S) in black/grey.
> 
> Summary of trying to complete this chapter: "Man, I sure am having a lot of great ideas for everything but the thing I need to finish." I should've given myself another week to finish and polish it, but I said I'd post it today, so here it is. I'll probably go back and pick at it in the downtime between updates like I did with Ch1. I think it's only now that I'm forcing deadlines that I realize how unconducive my work schedule is to writing on them. I'll figure I'll get used to it after a few months. I'll update this note with my next deadline in a few days. I'll probably have started a new editing pass as well so I can get this chapter up to snuff. I can only imagine how many typos I'll find once I'm awake. It would be much appreciated if you pointed out any you notice so I can fix them. EDIT: No editing on this chapter yet, but I've decided to make the 15th my dedicated update day. The next posted story will not be a Spookfish update, as I am currently futzing around with solidifying the rest of the story's outline, but a [MakoHaru+MakoHaruRin oneshot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7576261) I've been sitting on for a while now.
> 
> Criticism is not only welcome, but encouraged, and I'll answer any questions that you have. Thanks for reading.  
> 17 July 2016  
> \- 匿名重工業


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